A few months ago, leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were concerned that the party could suffer a shocking setback in the Upper House election next year if Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori remained in power then. There were also widespread fears that the ruling coalition of the LDP, New Komeito and the New Conservative Party could lose its majority in the chamber.

LDP officials believed that the only way to avoid a debacle was to have Mori resign as prime minister and then contest the election campaign under a new leader. For lack of a plausible pretext for forcing Mori to resign, officials came up with the idea of taking advantage of litigation concerning an alleged police record showing he was caught in a raid on a brothel more than 30 years ago, while he was a university student. Tokyo police, however, declined to supply the record to the court, dashing the hopes of anti-Mori forces in the LDP.

But politicians will do anything and everything to get what they want. To win the 2001 election, they devised a bill to change the Upper House voting system. It would revise the roster system for candidates nominated in the proportional-representation section of the Upper House polls. Currently, parties preset the ranks of the candidates. Under the new system, the list would be unranked and voters would choose either a party or a candidate instead of only a party, as at present.