Kan will replace Fujii

As expected, Fujii Hirohisa announced his resignation as finance minister on Wednesday. Hatoyama Yukio wasted no time naming his replacement: Kan Naoto will shift over to the finance ministry, and Sengoku Yoshito will take over for Kan as head of the national strategy bureau while continuing to run the government revitalization unit.

Kan's appointment was to a certain extent obvious. Having been deeply involved in the budgetary process, he is better able than most to defend the budget in Diet debates in the months to come. While Sankei — who else? — sees this move as the latest battle in the struggle between Hatoyama and Ozawa Ichiro for power (seriously, their article uses description of Hatoyama's facial expression — "disinterested" — when he answered a question about Ozawa's role in picking Kan to suggest that Hatoyama's answer that Ozawa wasn't involved masks something), moving Kan to the finance ministry will not hurt Hatoyama politically. Kan is a Hatoyama stalwart, has an independent following among the party's backbenchers, and is one of the few DPJ members with previous ministerial experience. As I suggested yesterday, it does raise questions about the future of the new cabinet organizations created by the Hatoyama government, both of which are now headed by Sengoku, but the role to be played by these bodies was already uncertain, and, as Michael Cucek suggests, might make their work more coherent. As finance minister, Kan may be more of a deputy prime minister than he was when he was actually deputy prime minister. He will be more visible as finance minister, having more opportunities to present the government's policies, and, if Ozawa is in fact wielding undue influence, Kan is in a better position to push back.

That is, unless Kan is occupied fighting the finance ministry's bureaucrats. While Fujii was one of their own number, Kan is very much not. After all, Kan made his name during the mid-1990s when as minister of health he fought his own ministry's bureaucrats over their response to an AIDS-tainted blood scandal. His early involvement — when he was at the peak of his popularity — in the political party being formed by the Hatoyama brothers gave the DPJ a boost during its first years. But by the same token, Kan has not made many friends in Kasumigaseki. While during the campaign he backed away from overheated anti-bureaucrat rhetoric, he remains on uneasy terms with the bureaucracy, including the finance ministry's officials. (Back in October, Kan gave a speech in which he referred to bureaucrats as oobaka/大ばか, which translates literally as great fools but also has some more colorful translations, for mindlessly squandering public money.)

It's possible that Kan's relationship with the ministry will be more antagonistic than Fujii's, but, on the other hand, given that the partnership between the Hatoyama government and the finance ministry is a matter of convenience for both sides — and that the ministry was shifting the DPJ's direction even before Fujii was tapped as finance minister — Kan may be able to maintain the relationship Fujii forged. And if Kan lasts in the job, he will be in a position to introduce lasting changes to the budgeting process, as discussed here.

Meanwhile, it bears asking whether Kan's appointment will have any consequences for the government's economic policies. We got a glimpse at Kan's thinking recently when he debated Takenaka Heizo, Koizumi Junichiro's reform czar, at a meeting of the committee responsible for drafting the government's latest economic strategy. Takenaka advanced his supply-side structural reformism: deregulation, privatization, and tax reform to encourage more investment by the private sector. Kan answered by defending the DPJ's focus on the demand side, stimulating more consumer spending. At the same time, Kan is adamant about cutting wasteful spending. Given Kan's role in drafting the government's economic strategy, his appointment will not make much difference in the outline of fiscal policy over the medium term.

But on other policy areas, Kan's views are less clear. He has stated that it is too soon to debate tax reform, including a consumption tax increase. It is unknown how far he will let the yen's value rise, although in a speech in November, Kan fingered the high yen as a cause of Japan's stagnant growth and said that the government would watch market developments carefully.

In short, the transition from Fujii to Kan will matter more in terms of its political ramifications for the Hatoyama government than for economic policy. Kan was already playing an important role in economic policy. Moving him to the finance ministry gives him more formal power as an economic policymaker.

Finally, it is worth noting just how unusual it is that Kan is now finance minister. Thirty years ago, Kan was first elected to the Diet as a candidate from Eda Saburo's Social Democratic Federation, which split off from the Socialist Party. Today he is the head of the ministry that is the very heart of the Japanese establishment. While it is common to point to DPJ politicians like Hatoyama and Ozawa and conclude that the DPJ is a pale imitation of the LDP, Kan's career shows that the DPJ's victory has brought new politicians with different backgrounds and different concerns from LDP politicians to the fore.

Fujii will depart

On Tuesday, Fujii Hirohisa, the seventy-seven-year-old finance minister who was hospitalized late last year, indicated that he will in all likelihood resign his post sometime soon. While he is officially waiting for his doctor's advice on his health, Fujii seems determined to resign.

In trying to dissuade Fujii from leaving, Prime Minister Hatoyama said that since Fujii "gave birth to a child" (the budget), he should stay on "to raise it." Fujii, however, insists that he will not be able to handle the strain of budgetary debates, suggesting that he will likely be gone before the ordinary Diet session opens on 18 January. (For those who want some groundless speculation about the reasons for Fujii's departure, Sankei has it all: declaring that it is "difficult to understand" the "suddenness" of the resignation of a seventy-seven-year-old cabinet minister who had to be hospitalized for exhaustion, it turns to Ozawa Ichiro — Sankei's villain of choice — to argue that Ozawa hounded Fujii to exhaustion, and, moreover, that Fujii was about to be hit with a political finance scandal from his days as secretary general of Ozawa's Liberal Party.)

Hatoyama's metaphor is probably not far off the mark. Considering that it seemed unlikely that the government would get its budget done before year's end after it ordered the finance ministry to cease work and decided to start over from scratch, it seems likely that Fujii bears considerable responsibility for completing the budget on schedule — to the detriment of his own health. A recent Foresight magazine article documents the extent to which the finance ministry has become unified with the government, thanks to the employment of Fujii and cabinet office deputy Furukawa Motohisa. The article suggests that there is some surprise in this development, but I must admit that I am not surprised at all. As the DPJ-led government struggles to cut wasteful spending and reform national administration, I expected it would increasingly find an ally in the the finance ministry, which, after all, still possesses useful skills for political leaders even if the political leaders are establishing the country's priorities. For all Foresight's evidence about links between the finance ministry and the government, there are few signs if any that the ministry has been calling the shots. While Fujii has been relatively quiet as finance minister— especially compared to some of his ministerial colleagues — I suspect the finance ministry's willingness to cooperate with the new government has a lot to do with Fujii's influence and experience with the ministry.

For the same reasons that I thought Fujii would make a good finance minister (and why it was wise of Hatoyama to coax him out of retirement and convince him to campaign again last year), his resignation will be a blow to the Hatoyama government. Replacing him will be a challenge. Not only will Hatoyama have to find someone who can control the finance ministry but he will also have to find someone capable of resisting or ignoring the machinations of Kamei Shizuka, which Fujii was able to do. Sankei provides some names of potential successors — Kan Naoto, the deputy prime minister, Sengoku Yoshito, the head of the government revitalization unit, or Noda Yoshihiko, one of two finance vice ministers — but of these three, perhaps only Kan is up to the challenge. Kan does not have Fujii's stature within the ministry, but he has been the DPJ's most eloquent spokesman on changing the budgetary process and is a significant enough figure within the DPJ that he would be equal to the job. The same could not be said for Sengoku or Noda. Of course, appointing Kan as finance minister would spell the end of the national strategy bureau as an important group within the government. Its development delayed, without a leading figure like Kan at its helm the NSB would likely become little more than a research and advisory body for cabinet ministers than a policymaking actor in its own right. While this development may be for the best, it will be a consideration as the Hatoyama government considers how to proceed following Fujii's resignation.

The media will try to spin this development as another blow to the government, but as usual, a bit of perspective is necessary. For once a senior minister is leaving office not because he has said or done something that embarrassed the government or (provided that Sankei's rumor-mongering is just that) because he has been found to have engaged in corruption, but because he is simply not up to the task physically. The Hatoyama government will replace him — not without some difficulty— and soldier on. Hopefully his successor will last longer in the job.

The DPJ begins work on regime change

In a remarkable coincidence, the day after the DPJ's victory in the general election — and the day the DPJ began its transition in earnest — was the same day that ministries and agencies submitted their spending requests to the ministry of finance for the Fiscal 2010 general account budget.

The requests totaled roughly 92.13 trillion yen, a 3.58 trillion yen increase over the 2009 general account budget, making it the first over 90 trillion yen. Of the total, 52.67 trillion yen are general expenditures, with most of the remainder going to servicing Japan's national debt and regional subsidies.

Tango Yasutake, the finance ministry's administrative vice minister, stressed the ministry's desire to complete the budget within the calendar year, as is customary. The reason for Tango's emphasizing the ministry's desire is of course because the DPJ, still a few weeks from taking power, wants to halt the process immediately due to its desire to rearrange the budget completely, for the sake of introducing political leadership into the budgeting process and ensuring that programs from the DPJ's manifesto are included in a DPJ government's first budget as per the timeline included in the manifesto.

DPJ leader Hatoyama Yukio has stressed that the DPJ wants to change the budget completely, as the budget does not reflect its desires whatsoever. Apparently Kawamura Takeo, the outgoing chief cabinet secretary, did not get the message sent by the Japanese people on Sunday: Kawamura said Tuesday that because the requests include measures related to economic stimulus, the DPJ should give serious consideration to the requests as they stand. His colleagues also seemed to miss the point of Sunday's election. Ishiba Shigeru, the outgoing agriculture minister, and Kaneko Kazuyoshi, the outgoing transport minister, used the occasion of the post-election cabinet meeting Tuesday to criticize DPJ programs and demand that the DPJ leave programs untouched.

This is the first battle in the DPJ's fight to change how Japan is governed, and it should win: Asahi reports that the finance ministry is trying to exclude obligatory organizational expenses from the DPJ's desire to reshape the budget in its image. Presumably that leaves plenty of room for the DPJ to fix the budget as it desires. In this fight, the timing of the election may have been fortuitous. The bureaucracy is now facing the DPJ fresh from the high of its historic victory, with possibilities for the new ruling party that presumably won't exist once the DPJ moves into government and gets bogged down in governing.

But at the same time, the process would go smoother if the DPJ were to assemble its cabinet lineup sooner rather than later. Despite earlier indications that a victorious DPJ would name the appointees for senior cabinet posts within the first week after a general election — as indicated in the transition plan which according to Asahi is more associated with Okada Katsuya than Hatoyama — Hatoyama said Monday that he would not name a handful of senior appointees before naming the entire cabinet. The whole cabinet will be named after Hatoyama is elected prime minister. It also seems that Hatoyama may be wavering on his desire to appoint only elected officials to leading cabinet posts as he realizes how inexperienced his own party's members are. I strongly disagree with the decision to delay filling the most senior positions early. The transition would presumably go more smoothly with the government's core in place immediately, with the ministers-in-waiting getting their own teams in place and beginning to meet with senior bureaucrats in the ministries. The transition period is critical for the Hatoyama government's proposed national strategy office, which will have a major role to play despite not existing yet. After all, the NSO will be responsible for remaking the budget along lines desired by the DPJ — a point reinforced by Hatoyama's comment that the posts of NSO chief and the finance minister will be stressed jointly. To smooth the transition, the NSO in particular ought to be staffed as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the press continues to report that Fujii Hirohisa will have a central role in the new government and that he will likely be joined by Kan, Okada, and Naoshima Masayuki, currently the DPJ's policy chief. Again, why wait if it is increasingly clear who will be occupying the leading posts? Filling these positions now would also take a bit of pressure off of Hatoyama — and would help move from abstract, campaign-style pronouncements as in Hatoyama's press conference Monday.

The bureaucracy itself is making its preparations for its new political masters. Bureaucrats have already delivered copies of budget requests to the offices of DPJ incumbents. For the first time, Yomiuri reports, DPJ members' offices are being visited by bureaucrats, in droves, whether or not the Diet members are present. Meishi are being left in mailboxes by bureau chiefs and other officials at levels never encountered by many DPJ members.

But the battle lines are also being drawn. As I argued in my earlier post on the importance of budgeting for the DPJ (previously linked to in this post), the DPJ's battle for budgetary authority will be waged more with spending ministries than with the finance ministry. Chief among them will be the ministry of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism (MLITT — haven't since this acronym, but why not?) and the ministry of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries (MAFF), the ministries with the most to lose from the DPJ's economy drive. Naturally MLITT's budget request was just about at the budgetary ceiling set by the CEFP. It appears that while MLITT has suggested that it might be open to revising its request, the ministry and the DPJ could clash over the construction of Yanba dam in Gunma prefecture and Kawabegawa Dam in Kumamoto — the DPJ called for the cancellation of both projects in its manifesto, meaning that the DPJ will fight that much harder to ensure that they are expunged from the budget. The DPJ's goal is cut 1.3 trillion yen in public works over four years (which, incidentally, shows how much Japan has already cut public works).

MAFF's request, meanwhile, was a 15% increase over last year's budget, an increase that includes a 19% increase in the ministry's public works spending.

MLITT, having shown conciliatory signs to the DPJ and having become accustomed to shrinking budgets, may find a way to accommodate itself to the new regime. Taniguchi Hiroaki, its administrative vice minister, requested a meeting with Hatoyama, a bit later than his colleagues in the leading ministries but still encouraging. Indeed, the ministry has announced that from 11 September it will freeze bidding on the Yanba dam, at least temporarily. The ministry still intends to argue for the dam, for which funds have already been dispersed to neighboring prefectures, but the DPJ probably has the upper hand.

The big fight will be with MAFF, which is truly threatened by the DPJ's income support plan and whose adminstrative vice minister has already traded words with the DPJ.

The DPJ could not have asked for a better start to its rule than to have bureaucrats dispirited and conscious of the fact that for now opposing the DPJ means opposing a public already ill-disposed to the bureaucracy, a public that whatever its doubts about the DPJ's manifesto is perhaps most sympathetic to the idea of political rule. It may be the case that neither side wants a fight for now, the DPJ because to wage open war on the bureaucracy would hinder its ability to get anything done, bureaucrats because for the moment a fight with the DPJ is a fight that they are sure to lose in the court of public opinion.

For more on the possibilities of genuine administrative reform, I recommend this essay by Karel van Wolferen, who is aware of the obstacles facing the DPJ without dismissing the possibility that the DPJ will succeed. I particularly like this sentence: "But my impression is that the individuals of the inner core of the party are deadly serious about what must be done to turn their country into what one of them, the most senior and most experienced Ozawa Ichiro, has in his writing called a 'normal country'."

Exactly so. The DPJ means what it said during the campaign, and is taking the first steps towards a new system of governance.

Japan's next finance minister?

As the DPJ was finalizing its proportional representation lists for the 30 August general election, one name was inserted at the last moment onto the party list in the South Kanto block: seventy-seven-year-old Fujii Hirohisa. Fujii had previously announced his retirement after a long career that included service in the finance ministry that ended at the level of budget examiner; two terms as an LDP member of the upper house; and six terms as a member of the lower house for the Japan Renewal, New Frontier, Liberal, and Democratic parties. Most importantly, he was the finance minister in Hosokawa government. But it seems that at the urging of Hatoyama Yukio he agreed to run one more time.

The reason for Hatoyama's wanting Fujii to run again is obvious. The DPJ desperately needs experienced hands if and when it forms a government. On Thursday Okada Katsuya, the DPJ secretary-general, alluded to Fujii's being at the center of a Hatoyama government. But Hatoyama has also quite rightly said that the most important posts in the government should go to Diet members. So naturally Fujii finds himself running once more. It also does not hurt that Fujii is close to Ozawa Ichiro, as the list of parties to which Fujii belongs suggests.

I have previously written of Fujii's position on how to change the budgeting process to give politicians a bigger role: his pragmatism may be the perfect approach to get the DPJ at least through to the 2010 upper house election, and probably longer. As important as any task facing the DPJ in its first months and years in office is convincing the public (and investors) that the DPJ has a competent and steady hand on the tiller at the finance ministry. It might also be received as a gesture of good faith by the finance ministry itself, making it easier to get the ministry to sign on to the party's plans.

I still think that the DPJ might push for more radical changes after a transition period, but Fujii could at least help ensure that the DPJ will last longer than a year or two. The DPJ, having few members with any cabinet experience whatsoever, needs all the help it can get. Some might question is age, but, after all, in 1998 Miyazawa Kiichi returned to the finance ministry just shy of his seventy-ninth birthday and served in the job for more than two years, the longest a finance minister had served since the Nakasone cabinet.

Given Hatoyama's questionable leadership abilities, picking good cabinet members is that much more indispensable for a Hatoyama government to succeed. Fujii would be a good start — and by requesting that Fujii run once more, Hatoyama has at least demonstrated that he knows he will need qualified people around him in government.

Now to solve the Ozawa problem...

The DPJ and the bureaucracy continue their dance

Sankei has a long and must-read article on the obstacles facing a DPJ government in implementing its plans for reforming the policymaking process.

The article highlights divisions within the DPJ over how to proceed in reforming Japan's administration, especially budget-making authority. The pragmatism visible in other aspects of the DPJ's program is also visible in the party's approach to administrative reform of late.

The pragmatic view is that of party senior counselor Fujii Hirohisa, a former LDP member who left the party in 1993, followed Ozawa Ichiro through from the Japan Renewal Party to the New Frontier Party to the Liberal Party to the DPJ. He served as finance minister in the short-lived Hata cabinet. And before running for the upper house in 1977 as an LDP candidate he served in ministry of finance for twenty-years, rising to the position of budget examiner in the budget bureau. Accordingly, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Fujii is opposed to suggestions that the DPJ might completely detach the budget bureau from the finance ministry and attach it to the cabinet (the party's 300-day transition plan refers to this idea).

Going as far as a 'national strategy office' is sufficient. We had better not fumble around by detaching the budget bureau from the finance ministry and creating a kind of budget office under the direct control of the prime minister. (Revising the laws) would take half a year, and in the meantime the government would break down.

There is a certain wisdom to Fujii's advice, at least as a DPJ government's first year in office goes. And it is worth listening to, for, as Sankei hints, Fujii could end up as finance minister despite not standing for reelection this year. Indeed, as a MOF OB (and Ozawa confidante) Fujii probably has the inside track on the finance portfolio.

Should the DPJ win this month, winning an absolute majority in the 2010 upper house election has to become its top priority. Any steps that interfere with the government's ability to move legislation that will enable the DPJ to stand before the voters in 2010 having made some progress in implementing its manifesto is detrimental to the goal of ensuring that a DPJ government survives. Whether or not a battle over the budget bureau would actually paralyze the government, it is a risk that the DPJ will not be willing to run.

Accordingly, it is entirely possible that the DPJ will soft pedal administrative reform during its first year. The DPJ would, of course, pass legislation creating a national strategy office (henceforth NSO) during this year's extraordinary Diet session, but the NSO, intended to replace the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) is not the radical change that relocating the budget bureau would be. At the same time, the DPJ appears to be looking for ways to build relationships with senior bureaucrats, a change in tune from calls for "loyalty tests" for senior ministry officials. The Sankei article notes that in addition to the meeting with Tango Yasutake, the administrative vice-minister of finance, mentioned in this post, senior officials from the MOF, MOFA, METI, and an unnamed fourth ministry met with senior DPJ Diet members in late July to discuss this year's supplemental budget and next year's budget. The finance ministry has also been meeting surreptitiously with Party President Hatoyama Yukio and Secretary-General Okada Katsuya. The impression I get is that both the DPJ and senior bureaucrats are eager to ensure a minimal level of continuity should the DPJ take power later this month.

I see no problem with this, at least as a short-term strategic decision. The bureaucracy's position of strength was not built in a year, and it will not be dismantled in a year. In the meantime, the DPJ will need allies in the bureaucracy, especially in order to limit the bureaucracy's ability to undermine the party's other policy programs. I do hope that budget authority is eventually wrested from the bureaucracy's hands, but I recognize that successful revolutions take time and usually involve the slow process of changing customs, norms, and ideas in addition to changing institutional structures. I do think Nakagawa Hidenao — who has been writing of the DPJ's "abandoning the 'abandoning Kasumigaseki' line" — is deeply unrealistic when he writes of the DPJ's shift to an "appeasement line" on administrative reform. Appeasement, when stripped of its negative connotations, often amounts to recognizing one's limitations in implementing a certain policy approach. Appeasement can go too far, of course, but for a DPJ possibly on the verge of taking power to look for ways to ameliorate the bureaucracy's concerns and possibly co-opt certain senior officials is prudent politics.

Interestingly, Machimura Nobutaka, Nakagawa's fellow Machimura faction member, criticized the DPJ's administrative reform plans in a way diametrically opposed to Nakagawa Wednesday: he argued that "political leadership" in the form desired by the DPJ would be "iron fisted."

At this point in time Japan could probably use some "iron-fisted" government, after years of the LDP's weak hand. In looking for ways to cooperate with the bureaucracy to achieve its goals, the DPJ may be coating its iron fist in velvet, at least during the first phase of its government.

Anticipated reactions

The ministry of finance, its ears filled with the ringing of revolution (or at least administrative reform), appears to be engaging in a classic case of anticipated reaction to the prospect of a DPJ government or an LDP government that could take its promise of "cutting waste" seriously. Accordingly, it has instructed requesting ministries to identify wasteful funding in their budget requests due at month's end. The finance ministry is particularly focused on inefficient public works projects.

The finance ministry is clearly trying to concede some ground to a possible DPJ government in the hopes that doing so will forestall a more forceful attempt by the DPJ to seize budgetary authority, at least in the short term. The anticipated reaction may well fail. On NHK Sunday Naoshima Masayuki, the DPJ's policy chief, said that if the DPJ takes power it will completely review the budget requests for fiscal year 2010, although he also said that the party wants to complete the budget within the calendar year, which might be difficult given that the party does not know whether it would have its preferred organization for drafting the budget — the national strategy office attached to the prime minister's office — ready in time to oversee a review of budgetary requests. But the DPJ has made no secret of its desire to restore the cabinet's constitutionally granted power to draft the budget to the elected representatives serving in the cabinet. Hatoyama Yukio made the DPJ's intentions clear to Tango Yasutake, the newly appointed administrative vice minister of finance, in a discussion in July. Tango had some praise for the party's plan for a national strategy office, but overall his reaction was perhaps a bit muted. Tango may well prove amenable to the party's plans: his service as a secretary to former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro may make him more amenable to the idea of "political control."

But this is just the first phase in what could ultimately be the defining battle of a DPJ government should the party win this month. The DPJ will presumably not be satisfied with waste cut voluntarily by the ministries, but the finance ministry loses little by trying to anticipate the DPJ's goals now, and by doing may ensure that this year's budget process goes smoothly despite a possible change of government. But if the DPJ is serious about overhauling the budget-making process so that politicians are responsible not just for determining the overall shape of the budget, but in micro-budgeting, determining which programs belong in the budget and how much public money they deserve, there will be a major struggle between the DPJ and the finance ministry, provided a potential DPJ government survives more than one budget cycle.

Abe reverts

I have previously discussed how the Abe Cabinet has reverted to form in the cabinet's relationship with the LDP; I have also discussed how Abe has essentially put his predecessor's structural reform ideas on hold.

Asahi picked up this narrative on Sunday, in an editorial on the government's recently issued fiscal policy draft proposal, asking whether it gives one the feeling that "dependence on the bureaucracy is returning." Echoing an argument I've made before about Abe's various reforms, the reforms proposed here (daylight savings time, targets of labor productivity, raising the minimum wage), while good and in and of themselves, hardly constitute structural reform. In the lurch, Asahi argues, the bureaucracy is regaining its former power — meaning an end to drastic change to Japanese economy and society.

The editorial is particularly harsh on budget cuts: the draft includes an overall percentage by which to cut, but leaves the details unstated, which means a role for the Ministry of Finance to fill in the blanks.

While Asahi is right to point out the "reversion," one should not look back at the Koizumi Cabinet through rose-tinted lenses. Koizumi also allied with the MOF bureaucracy to push through budget cuts. And while the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) was a promising source of reform ideas, it was often ineffective precisely because it had to rely on bureaucracies to move its plans. (Both points are well discussed in Aurelia George Mulgan's Koizumi's Failed Revolution.)

The other point is that the decline in the power and prestige of the bureaucracy as a result of scandals and mismanagement during the 1990s, and the subsequent rise in the stature of politicians and the premiership is not automatically a boon. One of the lessons from the career of Matsuoka Toshikatsu is that a weakened bureaucracy became easy prey for unscrupulous politicians like Matsuoka, who bullied and cajoled bureaucrats to do his bidding. Political leadership alone is not enough. Bureaucratic subordination is not enough. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats must be clarified, roles clearly defined, and each held accountable for their actions.

But doing so will take the courage to take on both bureaucrats and the LDP's policy organs — and Abe has been unwilling to do either.