The Economist July 1st 2017
24 Asia 2 O’Neill’s opponents smell blood. Mekere
Morauta, a former prime minister, emerged from retirement to contest a seat in Port Moresby, calling Mr O’Neill’s government “an octopus with many tentacles, invading every crevice…where there is the smell of money”. Other heavyweights who command enough name recognition and following to form a government include Don Polye, a treasurer whom Mr O’Neill dismissed; Sam Basil, an opposition leader; and Gary Juffa, the firebrand governor of Oro Province. Whoever emerges victorious will face the same headwinds. According the Asian Development Bank, growth plummeted from 13.3% in 2014 to just 2% last year, largely because of disappointing revenue from ExxonMobil’s massive liquefied-natural gas (LNG) project—the biggest private-sector investment in PNG’s history, which came online just as the international price of LNG began falling. Some economists argue that these statistics may understate the problem, and that the economy may in fact have contracted. Either way, the government has struggled to meet its obligations. Earlier this
year PNG lost its voting rights at the United Nations for failing to pay $180,000 in dues (the government blamed an administrative error). The country’s main electricity provider has cut power to several government agencies over unpaid bills. On the revenue side, the government may get some relief from rising commodity prices and additional LNG projects. One local economist says the government seems determined to “white-knuckle” it until then, perhaps bringing in some extra cash by hiking the sales tax, or taxing capital gains. Despite its fiscal woes the government remains committed to hosting next year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit for the first time. A new “APEC Haus” is being built on reclaimed land in the centre of Port Moresby, irritating some locals who think the money could be better spent. In 2019 Bougainville, a large but poor island that long waged a separatist battle against PNG’s central government, will hold a referendum on independence; few would be surprised if it voted to secede. The tenure of the government to be formed in August is unlikely to be easy, whoever ends up leading it. 7
Democracy in Japan
Bills before parliament Tokyo
The price of admission to Japanese politics is high
S
ETSU KOBAYASHI is still smarting from his brief foray into Japanese politics last year. A constitutional scholar, he set up a centrist political party called Kokumin Ikari no Koe (“The Angry Voice of the People”). But the people were not as angry as he thought: none of the party’s list of ten candidates won any of the seats allocated by proportional representation in elections for the upper house of parliament. They had each deposited ¥6m ($53,000) to run, which they all forfeited. The whole exercise left Mr Kobayashi ¥60m out of pocket—the price of a nice apartment in Tokyo. “Never again,” he says. Candidates for first-past-the-post seats in parliament pay half as much (¥3m)—but that is still swingeing by international standards (see chart). This creates a big obstacle for new parties or independents trying to break into politics. Tokyo is about to hold elections for its local assembly; candidates must stump up ¥600,000 to stand. Tomin First no Kai (Tokyoites First), an upstart party founded this year by Yuriko Koike, the city’s governor (pictured), has had to raise millions of yen to register its novice candidates. Setting the cost of entry so high favours the big political parties, backed by
unions and industry lobbies, complains Akira Miyabe of Greens Japan, and helps ensure that parties like his don’t get a sniff at office. “The system is clearly unfair and unconstitutional,” he says. Britain inspired Japan’s Election Law of 1925. At the time many European govern-
At least help us get our money back
Money politics Deposits required for lower-house election candidates, June 2017, $ 0
250 500 750 1,000
Japan*
Vote needed to get deposit back, % of total
26,728
10.0
Australia
4.0
Canada
nil†
Britain
5.0
India
16.7
Sources: Electoral commissions; InterParliamentary Union
*For first-past-the-post seats †If candidate files financial reports
ments set daunting deposits to try to keep the riff-raff out of politics. But whereas the deposit for a parliamentary candidate in Britain remained fixed at £150 from 1918 until 1985 (it is now £500), the Japanese rates kept pace with inflation. Moreover, Britain has lowered the threshold below which a deposit is forfeited from 12.5% of votes to 5%. Other countries have done away with deposits altogether. America, for one, does not require them. Some would like Japan to follow suit. A group of lawyers led by Kenji Utsunomiya, who has twice run unsuccessfully for governor of Tokyo (a deposit of ¥3m, which he retained), is making its third attempt in the city’s courts to have deposits scrapped. The Diet, Japan’s parliament, toyed with lowering them in 2008, but did not. Ironically, says Mr Miyabe, the initiative came from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which dominates Japanese politics and is easily the country’s best-funded party. Its intention in proposing the change, cynics say, was not to open politics to the rabble, but to hobble the Democratic Party of Japan, a left-leaning rival, by attracting more candidates and thus splitting the opposition. At any rate, with the Democrats now enfeebled, the LDP seems to have lost interest in changing things. 7