Both carrying political DNA of their parents

Maswood Alam Khan
THERE was a time when our ancestors favoured their wards' weddings only with their nearest relations in order to guard family interests and maintainstrong community bondage. Similarly, royal families used to maintain closeblood ties through intermarriage. Repeated incidence of such intermarriage used to result in 'inbreeding depression' leading to a reduction in genetic diversity, an against-the-nature behavior that, if continued the world over until today, could endanger human life to the point of extinction.
Thanks to the knowledge gleaned from biologists and geneticists, we now caution our children about shying away from their blood relations as far aspossible while choosing their life partners and kings too look for princes far away from their kingdoms to outfit with their daughters as sons-in-law.
Meeting new people, traveling to virgin territories, marrying a foreigner and interacting with strangers are all human penchants for knowing the unknown and in effect for diversifying genes to adapt with a variety of climates and cultures that quietly reinforces our immunity against threats to life's evolution.
Dynastic rule, a succession of rule by the same family for generations, is somewhat analogous to biological procreation through inbreeding---a rule devoid of diversity in governing patterns and styles that did not augur well in most cases in the past as has been evident in countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia or the Philippines. Nearly all dynasties in Asian democratic countries involve male political leaders being succeeded by their widows or daughters.
Some dynasties like the Nehru-Gandhi family though, by some freak of fate, did exhibit a semblance of successful governance in India more on the merit of their education than on bluebloods running through their pink veins ultimately succumbed to the burden of rule. Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru the first Indian Premier, Indira Gandhi, herself a towering political leader, had to embrace defeat in 1977 because she as India's Prime Minister failed to refrain her son Sanjay Gandhi from wielding and abusing power without accountability. Mindful of fallouts of dynastic rules Sonia Gandhi, widow of an assassinated Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi who was son and grandson of Premiers: Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru respectively, showed her political sagacity by keeping herself and her family out of the public limelight, not wanting them to face the fate of her husband and mother-in-law.
Neither have Americans had a sweet experience with their present President, Bush the junior who is son of a former American President, Bush the senior. 'Doing what Papa did' was perhaps the memetic impression deeply ingrained in his cerebrum that prodded Bush the junior to tinker again with what Bush the senior first sparked: war in Iraq. Two sons became presidents after their fathers emerging as a political family since the days of Prescott Bush, who was a senator in Eisenhower administration and the grandfather of current US President George W. Bush.
With bitter experience of rule by family members in succession, Americans may feel like thinking twice or more before sending Hilary as US President to the White House where she herself spent eight years as an American First Lady. Americans, nevertheless, are very fond of changing models of their cars and other creature comforts and they would naturally be looking forward to someone new entering the White House. If they elect Hilary as their next President, the choice will not be that much for a former first lady as it would be for the first female US President in American history -- again an attempt to try a new dimension in the governing paradigm.
New faces, new dimensions and new tools are what management gurus stress upon as vehicles for efficient delivery of products and services. Machinery of a state or an enterprise that cannot fit in with modernity are doomed to fail in today's world of paradigm shifts.
Oh no, not in Japan, should you broach an idea to replace a Japanese tradition by anything funky! "Doing what Papa or Grandpa did or sermonized" is a religion Japanese follow. Strapped for manpower they are churning out industrial robots by thousands but they also make sure that robots bow their heads at the precise angle if those are required to salute their human supervisors exactly the way papas used to be revered by their sons in office or home. However convenient are the forks, spoons and knives they cannot imagine taking dinner in a chic eatery without a pair of chopsticks angling strips of noodle and sifting through bones. Whatever crimes their ancestors did commit in war or peace they cannot envisage their children reading in their history books a word dishonouring their papas, grandpas or great-grandpas. Every Japanese is trained on how to keep cool and patience so that their anger does not surface on their faces. But, a Japanese will rattle and bristle with rage if anyone mentions about Japan's World War II abuses committed against "comfort women"---those citizens of captive Asian countries forced into prostitution by the Japanese military.
53-year old Abe, visibly wreaked, has left the Prime Minister's Office and 71-year old Fukuda, expressively humble, has stepped in as the 91st Premier of Japan through a 'revolving door system' that turns around in circle fastest among similar doors in Premiers' offices all over the world. Only during Koizumi's tenure in that office, the revolving door stood still for five and a half years generating a hope that the main door to the Premier's office in Japan will gradually retard its revolving speed. Nevertheless, Abe's stint in the office for less than a year dashed that hope.
Fukuda has grown mellower with age whereas Abe was the youngest in postwar period to hold the prime position of Japan. Fukuda does not want to provoke the ire of the Chinese or the Koreans by visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine that includes convicted Class A war criminals in its honoured war dead. Abe, on the other hand, juxtaposed himself as blind to Japan's war crimes.
"A beautiful Japan" not only in economic prowess but also in other fashions and postures a developed country usually flaunts was a cocoon of dreams Shinzo Abe knitted as he assumed premiership just a year back. Such a Japan, Abe distressfully observed, was also a dream his maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi (a staunch nationalist who bounced back from imprisonment as an alleged war criminal to become Japan's Premier from 1957 to 1960), his great-uncle Eisako Sato (also former Prime Minister of Japan) and his father Shintaro Abe (former secretary-general of LDP) fancied but could not quite help fulfill.
Yoko Kishi, Abe's mother (daughter of a Prime Minister) failing to fulfill her dream to find her husband as a Premier was at last happy to see her son as Prime Minister of Japan, though for a short while. Many like Abe in the Japanese corridors of politics carry political DNA of their parents and grandparents.
Abe's dream to prise Japan open, inter alia, from the shell of pacifism, ostensibly forced on his country in the wake of World War II, fizzled out as he found himself too fatigued to fight with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Abe was perhaps too preoccupied spangling his country with frills of global status to empathize with his fellow citizenry struggling against burning predicaments: the young workers working longer hours while paying higher taxes and the aged pensioners living longer lives while receiving lesser bread and butter. Adding insult to injury Japanese boys as well as girls nowadays weirdly prefer 'me time' of single life to hassles of marital life resulting in ominously negative growth of population.
Plagued by economic recession and moribund growth for more than a decade, Japan only in 2002 felt a little waft of relief and Japanese in general wished in vain to go back to their golden era of 80s. Whatever benefits derived out of Japan's recent partial recovery from recession, Japanese commoners grudgingly observed, are only corporate fat cats eating all up. Abe failed to hear what the Japanese most wanted: reforms in medical, pension and elderly care systems---and more jobs.
His leadership of LDP, a party in power for almost 51 years, was also seriously questioned when, in the last July legislative election, the opposition DPJ, setting a first instance in the country's history, snatched away from LDP the control of the Diet's Upper House. Abe's fall thereby turned out to be a matter of time with his popularity plummeting from a high of 70% when he took office to 30% in recent polls, though nobody expected his departure so imminent.
His abrupt decision to leave office, nevertheless, is still shrouded in mysteries. He had already proven himself as a tenacious politician in fighting with Diet members on local thorny issues and weathering diplomatic storms like the issue of North Korean abductions. Abe was the daring person who deliberately breached a diplomatic agreement with North Korea and defiantly debarred some of those Japanese abductees, who traveled from North Korea to Japan as guests on temporary travel permits, from going back to the abductor's country. Such a fighter was not expected to lose his nerves so easily at a mere threat from DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa (son of a former Cabinet minister) of blocking the passage of a legislation that would allow Japan to continue refueling foreign military vessels participating in anti-terror activities in countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, a threat widely touted as an excuse for his resignation.
Pundits of think tanks suspect that Abe, though young in age, could no more bear the burden of the job of Prime Minister, a job that demands wisdom and maturity of a weathered politician more than gut reactions and unwrinkled face of a young man. Abe would have found his facial skin a little wizened and his pepper-and-salt sideburns a little more greyer had he waited for a few years more before deciding to hold the reign of Japan and perhaps could prove himself a better capable captain to navigate the nation towards his 'beautiful Japan' full of steeled muscles, economic as well as military.
Notwithstanding his short tenure, Abe will be remembered as one of a few whistle-blowers who attempted to unshackle Japan from her pacifistic imprisonment for more than sixty years since the USA dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the fag end of World War II. Of course, the bandwagon Abe jumped on singing the chorus on 'freedom from pacifism' was piloted by his immediate predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, who sent his armed forces in anti-terror operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and first sounded an inkle to loosen his country's constitutional restrictions on military missions. Abe wished to tell the global audience that Japan, as the second richest economy in the world blessed with mature democratic institutions, should be the best player, at least better than China, to help shape the Asian century.
Son of Takeo Fukuda (former Prime Minister of Japan) Yasuo Fukuda, the bespectacled and elderly leader in LDP and the newest Prime Minister of Japan may not find his tomorrows smooth with a parliament precariously divided. Fukuda, the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history, in traditional Japanese humility had told that he was neither highly educated nor talented. He felt overwhelmed, as he bowed to applause from LDP lawmakers, to become party president in a recent election where he won 330 votes against 197 bagged by his rival Taro Aso, a hawkish former foreign minister.
Given the shocks and strains his predecessor Abe had to withstand, Fukuda will have to choose slower steps in bringing reformations at home to ensure truly a safe, secure and stable Japan as hoped for from him by LDP and the Japanese gentry. He has already pledged to pay more heed to depressed rural regions and at the same time acknowledged his government's limitations in spending, given public debt already about one and a half times Japan's gross domestic product.
Fukuda will have to adjust the thermostat of his overseas relationship to a tepid mark -- neither chilly cold with North Korea nor cozy warm with the USA. He may also have to taper down his tone while addressing international parleys and conventions compared to exuberant tenor Abe used to resonate as a captain of an economic vis-à-vis military power in the making.
Abe's schema of creating a "Beautiful Country", as was emotively depicted in his best-selling book "Toward a Beautiful Nation", by restoring traditional values and bolstering military operations may, at least for the time being, take a hidden space in the back-trunk of the vehicle Fukuda himself will be driving until the next election.
Fukuda will have to master the diplomacy art while addressing many of his country's territorial disputes with neighbors: with Russia over the South Kuril Islands, with South Korea over the Liancourt Rocks, with China and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands, with China over the status of Okinotorishima and with North Korea over its abduction of Japanese citizens and its nuclear and missile programmes. Also how Fukuda wrestles with his opposition DPJ on thorny issues like activating Japanese military as truly operational force at global theatres and their commitment to the US in anti-terror activities throughout the world will determine the length and peace of his tenure in his new office.
Japanese people irrespective of their political affiliations have a soft corner for anyone who speaks in Bangla, especially for one who is born on the soil of Bangladesh. One such Bangla speaking luminary was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who raised Indian National Army as a force allied with Japan to fight in World War II with a goal to free India from the British colonial rule. Another Bangla speaking personality the Japanese still remembers with a deep sense of gratitude and esteem was Justice Radha Binod Pal who was born in a small village called 'Kakiladaha' in 'Sadarpur' union of Mirpur Upazilla under Kushtia District in Bangladeesh. Justice Pal was one of 1 judges of Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946-48) which tried 30 senior Japanese figures charged with war crimes. The tribunal passed seven death sentences and sixteen life sentences. Justice Pal was the only dissenting judge who opined for acquittal. No wonder, why Japan is the largest donor for Bangladesh!
(The writer is Maswood Alam Khan, General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and may be reached over Email:[email protected])