VANISHING PENSIONS TEST ABE'S LEADERSHIP

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TOKYO 002507 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/04/2017 TAGS: PGOV ECON EFIN JA SUBJECT: VANISHING PENSIONS TEST ABE'S LEADERSHIP REF: TOKYO 2397 Classified By: AMBASSADOR J. THOMAS SCHIEFFER, REASONS 1.4(B),(D). ¶1. (C) Summary. Prime Minister Abe is making a concerted effort to recover the political football he fumbled last week over revelations that the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) mishandled pension benefits, forcing remedial legislation through the Lower House. The aggressive tactics, coupled with strong public statements accepting responsibility for the "vanishing" benefits and promising to honor claims, are a marked departure from Abe's initial halfhearted and insensitive response, and show he realizes he needs to work quickly to restore public confidence in advance of key Upper House elections. News of the SIA's sloppy bookkeeping helped send Abe's support rate plummeting by as much as 12 percent in the last week of May, and the numbers have not improved in subsequent polls. End Summary. What Went Wrong -------------- ¶2. (C) In January 1997, the SIA began computerizing public pension data in an effort to integrate its administration of separate pension programs for corporate employees, government employees, and self-employed workers. (Note: The programs remain separate.) Prior to 1997, the Agency issued new pension identification numbers to people as they switched jobs or changed their names, often creating multiple numbers for a single person and multiple opportunities for computer error. Other discrepancies arose during the ten years (1979-1989) that names were recorded in Japan's katakana alphabetic script, rather than in the usual Chinese characters. When the new system was inaugurated in 1997, there were 300 million unidentified accounts. Over the past ten years, through a process of contacting listed subscribers and checking names, dates of birth, addresses, and other information on file, that number has been whittled down to the current 51 million unidentified accounts. Approximately 29 million of the those accounts are believed to belong to people who are already receiving pension benefits, people who have already died, or individuals who failed to pay into the system for the required minimum of 25 years. The remaining accounts belong to people under the age of 59, the legal age to qualify for benefits. Public Awareness Leads to Outcry -------------- ¶3. (C) The revelations of sloppy SIA record-keeping are not new. However, Japanese media seized on the story following a May 25 debate in the Lower House Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee over ruling coalition bills to disband the SIA and transfer its functions to several new entities in 2010. What drew the public's attention was the news that under current regulations, public pension recipients who can prove they are entitled to additional benefits by correcting their past premium contribution records can only claim the higher benefits retroactively for a period of five years. Health, Labor and Welfare (HLW) Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa testified in the Lower House on May 30 that approximately 250,000 pension recipients are likely to receive reduced benefits if the five-year limitation is not eliminated. Lifting the limit, he said, would result in an additional payment of nearly US$3,500 for each of the affected recipients, or a total of almost one billion dollars. ¶4. (C) Prime Minister Abe's initial response raised the public's ire and invited a deluge of criticism. Abe made no suggestions on how to remedy the situation for the many citizens at risk of loosing pension benefits. Rather he blamed the past administration of the SIA and urged ordinary citizens to better manage their own accounts. Cabinet Support Rates Drop, Abe Scrambles -------------- TOKYO 00002507 002 OF 003 ¶5. (C) Disclosure of record-keeping problems at the SIA helped send the cabinet's support rate down by as many as 12 percentage points in the last week of May. Abe, realizing he had made a serious misstep, is working quickly to regain his footing in response to the public outcry. The ruling coalition hurriedly pushed a new bill to eliminate the five-year statute of limitations through the Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee on May 30. The vote was hotly contested by the opposition, which accused the LDP of forcing the bill through with only a single day for debate. That bill, and the original legislation to reform the SIA, passed the Lower House at 1:00 a.m. on June 1, after failed attempts the two previous days. Abe hopes to move the bills quickly through the Upper House, in order to prevent the issue from becoming a central media focus prior to the Upper House elections, scheduled to take place on July 22. LDP Diet Affairs Chairman Toshihiro Nikai told the Embassy on May 30 he was confident the bills would pass before the Diet session ends on June 23, in part because the aggressive actions by the ruling parties had taken the opposition by surprise. In his opinion, decisive action was necessary in order to restore public confidence. ¶6. (C) Abe has promised that the SIA will complete the process of cross-checking the 51 million unidentified accounts within the next year, and will contact approximately 30 million pension recipients to ensure that their payments have been properly credited. In addition, he has pledged to create an impartial panel to investigate the causes of the SIA's record-keeping problems and resolve claims. In a further move to soften the perception of the government's initial stiff stance, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told the press over the June 2 weekend that the government was "looking humbly" at the large number of unidentified pension accounts. Abe's Leadership Again Questioned -------------- ¶7. (C) The emergence of the pension scandal created both a sense of crisis in the LDP-Komeito coalition and an opportunity for the opposition. Abe's initial response -- pointing fingers at the SIA and putting the onus on ordinary citizens to better manage their accounts -- made him appear unfeeling, and fed media criticism that he has failed to exhibit creative problem-solving and leadership skills. His early resistance to paying out claims on the unidentified accounts or to offering relief from the five-year limit on back payments was particularly offensive to voters in their 50s and 60s. This group is the most affected by the accounting gaffes, and a key support demographic for the LDP. Media polls taken on June 1 and 2 indicate that voters have yet to give Abe credit for his subsequent turnaround. ¶8. (C) There is a possibility that voters will reject the ruling coalition's aggressive tactics in the Diet. The opposition, while unsuccessful in its attempt to disrupt the pre-dawn vote on Abe's reform proposals by submitting motions to remove the chairmen of the Lower House welfare and steering committees and a no-confidence motion against HLW Minister Yanagisawa, may have garnered sympathy from voters for trying to stop the fast-tracking of remedial legislation with a minimum of debate. Japanese voters value consensus and negotiation in the political process. Opposition claims that incomplete pension reform bills were bulldozed through the Lower House with insufficient discussion found a receptive audience. Media reports on June 4 speculated that opposition parties are currently considering a no-confidence motion against Abe. Calls for a cabinet reshuffle prior to the elections are also likely to increase. A media contact told the Embassy he thought the next two weeks would be critical for Abe, and that his handling of the upcoming G8 summit in Germany would be an important test for his leadership. Abe appears to be readying a push to force through civil service reform legislation, in an effort to TOKYO 00002507 003 OF 003 gain points with voters. ¶9. (C) Pension reform has been an important issue for Abe since his campaign for prime minister in the summer of 2006. The plan to remake the SIA was labeled one of the "three arrows" of his policy agenda, along with education and civil service reform. Polls show pensions top the list of Japanese voter concerns, with well over fifty percent indicating it is a pressing issue, versus only 10 to 20 percent who indicate constitutional reform, foreign affairs, or education reform are important to them. The recent turn of events, however, has made it appear as if Abe's policy approach was too heavily focused on restructuring the SIA, and not enough on the record-keeping problems that threatened to shrink benefits for recipients who had otherwise paid properly into the system. Abe is being faulted in the press for having made the pension issue a low priority during this Diet session, choosing instead to focus on issues such as constitutional revision and education reform. Some of those same critics question why the ruling coalition brought the SIA-related bills to committee so close to the Upper House election, knowing how contentious they would be. Prior to Abe's most recent slide in the polls, Embassy contacts were relatively certain that the ruling coalition would not undertake serious debate on pension reform measures until the September extraordinary Diet session, given time restraints and Abe's other priorities. SCHIEFFER