The Democratic Party is choosing a new leader just as the opposition force is in the throes of what threatens to become an existential crisis. Both contenders in the leadership race — former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano — as well as the DP members who will be voting Sept. 1 to pick their new leader, must take the party's predicament seriously. They should consider the race as possibly the last chance for a turnaround of the party that, after its crushing fall from power in 2012, has not been able to regain the trust of voters as a viable alternative to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition.
Maehara and Edano are in the race to take over from outgoing chief Renho, who took the blame for the party's dismal performance in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election in July, at a time when it appears that the DP is increasingly being bypassed by voters even though it's the opposition leader. Popular support for the DP didn't rise even as the Abe administration suffered a plunge in public approval ratings. In the Tokyo race, it was the popular Gov. Yuriko Koike's fledgling party that swept the assembly seats while Abe's Liberal Democratic Party suffered devastating losses.
More than a dozen candidates initially tapped to run on the DP ticket in the Tokyo election deserted the party before the campaign began. In addition, among the DP's Diet members, five have either left the party or tendered their resignations since April, including Goshi Hosono, a former deputy party chief who was once deemed a potential candidate for the party's leadership. He quit the party in early August after saying the DP's pursuit of an election campaign cooperation with the Japanese Communist Party runs counter to his political beliefs. There is speculation that more may follow in his footsteps — possibly to team up with a national party being contemplated by Koike.