LDP may put brake on hereditary candidacy from next general election

TOKYO, May 21 Kyodo -
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will likely put some sort of limit on
so-called hereditary candidates for the next general election for the House of
Representatives and beyond, party lawmakers said Thursday.
The ruling party is one step behind the main opposition Democratic Party of
Japan, which decided last month not to endorse Diet members' children or
relatives who plan to inherit their electoral districts and run from there.
Should the LDP apply a limit, Shinjiro Koizumi, the second son of former Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who plans to inherit his father's constituency in
Kanagawa Prefecture, may not be able to run as an LDP candidate. The former
prime minister will not run in the next election as he plans to retreat from
the political scene.
An LDP panel examining the matter will likely decide further details and submit
a draft plan to Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is also LDP president, by the end
of this month, the lawmakers said.
On the issue of Koizumi's son, Aso told reporters, ''It should be OK if the
party invites public participation'' and chooses a candidate to run from the
constituency, apparently showing his approval for the limitation on hereditary
candidacy.
Aso, who has a political pedigree and is the grandson of former Prime Minister
Shigeru Yoshida, has taken a cautious stance toward restricting hereditary
candidacy.
In a related move, some LDP members launched a separate project team Thursday
afternoon to review the hereditary trend among LDP candidates.
Specifically, the project team aims to curtail the number of Diet seats, not
allow the kin of Diet members to take over their electoral districts after the
incumbents retire, and not allow the successors to inherit political funds left
in the outgoing lawmakers' political funds management bodies.
''What we are seeking is to apply certain rules in the recruiting process,''
Taro Kono, the head of the project team, told reporters after the day's
meeting. ''It's not that we open fire at some of our colleagues (who are
hereditary legislators).''
Kono is also a political blue blood whose father is Yohei Kono, speaker of the
lower chamber.
In Thursday's meeting, Yoshihide Suga, deputy chairman of the LDP's Election
Strategy Council, said, ''The party should recruit candidates with diverse
backgrounds,'' showing his willingness to limit hereditary candidacy.
''From the standpoint of eliminating barriers to entering (politics), the
hereditary pattern must be examined,'' Masahiko Shibayama, a lower house
member, told the meeting.
Soichiro Tahara, a journalist who was invited to the meeting, said,
''Hereditary politicians are gutless and not tenacious,'' referring to former
prime ministers like Yasuo Fukuda and Shinzo Abe, who abruptly resigned after
only one year in office.
Families ''who have commanded privileges can no longer represent the public,''
he said.
In April, the DPJ decided to ban people within the third degree of kinship of
Diet members from succeeding and running from their constituencies and taking
over their political funds management groups.
It is planning to include the rules in its campaign platform for the next lower
house election that must be held by this fall.
==Kyodo