| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| China-Japan-Koreas | ||
| Japan opposition could win election landslide | ||
| 2009-08-20 | ||
| TOKYO, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Japan's opposition Democratic Party could win about 300 seats in an Aug. 30 election for parliament's 480-seat lower house, trouncing the conservative party that has ruled for most of the past half-century, a newspaper said on Thursday. But the Asahi newspaper also said that some 30 to 40 percent of voters in its survey of electoral districts had not revealed how they would vote while 25 percent might change their minds, so results could shift significantly in the final days. Previous opinion polls have shown the Democrats well ahead of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), raising the prospect that the business-friendly LDP will lose power for only the second time in its 54-year history. Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, now looking likely to become the next prime minister, has pledged to revive the economy by putting more money in the hands of consumers, hold off on raising the 5 percent sales tax for four years and adopt a diplomatic stance less subservient to top security ally the United States.
The Asahi said its survey showed the LDP, which had 300 seats ahead of the election, could see its presence halved in the powerful lower house, while its junior partner, the New Komeito party, was likely to keep somewhere around 31 seats. Experts say predicting the outcome of the election is made difficult by Japan's electoral system, in which 300 of the seats are from winner-take-all, single member districts. The remaining 180 come from multiple-seat proportional representation blocks in which voters cast ballots for a party. Popular leader Junichiro Koizumi led the LDP to a huge victory in 2005 on a platform pledging market-friendly reforms. But the party's support then slid as his two successors each quit after less than a year and incumbent Prime Minister Taro Aso came under fire for a series of gaffes and policy flip-flops. The Democrats and two small allies won control of the upper house in 2007, enabling them to stall legislation and creating a policy deadlock as Japan struggled with deep-seated problems due to its shrinking, ageing population and the global financial crisis. Aso has been stressing the success of the LDP's economic stimulus packages in helping Japan weather the global financial crisis and attacked the Democrats as weak on security policy and irresponsible on financial issues. But analysts said that news on Monday that Japan's economy returned to growth in the second quarter would probably do little to rescue the LDP, even though the figures marked the end of the country's longest recession since World War Two. | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 The Japanese Democratic Party is Japan's left-wing party. If it wins, Uncle Sam's bases in Japan may be history, and Japan may be well on its way to becoming a Chinese vassal state. 60 years of a postwar alliance with the US hang in the balance. Just as well, anyway. It's about time Orientals got off American military welfare. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2009-08-20 16:35 |