‘Partial Coalition’ a Tricky Balancing Act for LDP; Agreement Barely Reached Over FY2025 Budget

The Yomiuri Shimbun

7:01 JST, February 27, 2025

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito has reached an agreement on certain policies with the opposition Japan Innovation Party — including making high school education free — thereby ensuring the passage of the fiscal 2025 budget during the current Diet session.

The LDP is working to govern through a “partial coalition,” in which the ruling parties cooperate with opposition parties on a policy-by-policy basis to manage the government. However, issues remain to be addressed regarding the latest agreement, which was barely achieved.

“I would like to express my sincere respect for the extraordinary efforts of those involved in reaching the agreement,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday evening after a meeting with Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito and JIP co-representative Hirofumi Yoshimura.

The agreement was a major achievement for Ishiba, who had been seeking to establish a partial coalition with opposition parties after the LDP and Komeito became a minority ruling coalition after the House of Representatives election in autumn last year.

With the JIP’s decision to vote in favor of the budget bill, it is increasingly believed that even if a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet was submitted to the Diet, the party would have no choice but to vote against it. “Now the prospects are clear for how to manage the government until the House of Councillors election,” a senior LDP official said,

The LDP was in a state of turmoil after getting pressured by the JIP in the three-party talks that began in December. At the end of the talks, the JIP added lower social insurance premiums as a condition for its supporting the bill.

A break came during a meeting of the lower house’s Budget Committee on Feb. 17. Responding to a question by Seiji Maehara, co-representative of the JIP, Ishiba said the government subsidies for helping students attend private high school will be increased based on the most recent national average tuition fee of ¥457,000.

The amount had not been presented at working-level talks between the parties. Ishiba’s remarks were the result of his direct negotiations with Maehara, who is on friendly terms with the prime minister.

Ishiba later showed his willingness to make concessions by removing the expression of “based on the most recent national average tuition fee” from the agreement.

The LDP leadership also cut through some party members’ opposition to Ishiba’s decision. An LDP member with an interest in education had said the issue of the quality of education had been left behind in the debate.

The JIP made private high schools free in its stronghold of Osaka, and stressed to voters during campaigning for the lower house election last autumn that the party would spread such reform to the whole country.

Yoshimura, who places the expansion of free tuition as the key to recovering the party’s strength, said the latest agreement at the trilateral meeting was “a very big step forward.”

However, the “partial coalition” between the LDP and the JIP is unstable. Maehara only joined the JIP last year and has a weak base within the party. It is unclear whether the “Ishiba-Maehara connection” will work in the future as well.

The ruling camp and opposition parties plan to decide how to deal with donations from corporations and organizations by the end of March, and the JIP is strongly calling for a ban on such donations. Since the Democratic Party for the People has not actively called for such a step, hopes are high within the LDP that it can work with the DPFP to prevent a ban.

Following tough negotiations between the LDP, Komeito and the DPFP over the revision of the ¥1.03 million threshold for taxable income, the prime minister instructed LDP members to “do whatever you can to make adjustments.” He apparently hopes to maintain the support of the DPFP, in a bid to be able to work with both the JIP and the DPFP.