Calls already coming in for fast action after DPJ sweeps LDP out of power

Monday 31st August, 08:54 AM JST

TOKYO —

The morning after a historic victory by Japan’s opposition party in national elections, pressure was already mounting Monday for quick, definitive action on a host of problems facing the country, with jump-starting the economy at the top of the list.

The country is mired in its worst economic slump since World War II, caught in deflation and with unemployment at record levels. Widespread voter dissatisfaction with the ruling party’s efforts at a turnaround led to a landslide victory for the opposition.

Monday morning news broadcasts ran nonstop coverage of the election blowout, with winning politicians leading their supporters in cheers of “banzai” and solemn shots of grim-faced lawmakers that had been ousted. Every major newspaper fronted pictures of Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the victorious Democratic Party of Japan and a near lock to become Japan’s next prime minister.

But even before the final government tally of election results were released Monday morning, calls were being made for immediate action.

“Answer the expectations and responsibilities for change,” said an editorial in the Yomiuri, the country’s largest newspaper.

“The new government has presented showpiece policies but the source of funding remains unclear,” said the Nikkei, Japan’s main business paper, in its own editorial.

Hatoyama and his party—an eclectic mix of former members of the ruling party, socialists and progressives—face a daunting array of challenges, economic and demographic.

“This is a victory for the people,” said Hatoyama. “We want to build a new government that hears the voices of the nation.”

A grim-looking Prime Minister Taro Aso conceded defeat just a couple hours after polls had closed, suggesting he would quit as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for all but 11 months since 1955.

“The results are very severe,” Aso said. “There has been a deep dissatisfaction with our party.”

Japan’s economy has been hit hard amid the global recession and falling demand for its exports. The unemployment rate has spiked to a record 5.7% and younger workers have watched the promise of lifetime employment fade. Incomes are stagnant and families have cut spending.

The country also faces threats as its population ages, which means more people are on pensions and there is a shrinking pool of taxpayers to support them and other government programs.

The Democrats’ plan to give families 26,000 yen a month per child through junior high is meant to ease parenting costs and encourage more women have babies. Japan’s population of 127.6 million peaked in 2006, and is expected to fall below 100 million by the middle of the century.

The Democrats are also proposing toll-free highways, free high schools, income support for farmers, monthly allowances for job seekers in training, a higher minimum wage and tax cuts. The estimated bill comes to 16.8 trillion yen if fully implemented starting in fiscal year 2013—and critics say that will only further bloat Japan’s already massive public debt.

In foreign relations, the Democrats have said they want Tokyo to be more independent from Washington on diplomatic issues, though they have stressed that the U.S. will remain Japan’s key ally and that they want to keep relations good, while also strengthening ties with their Asian neighbors.

Official nationwide results were expected to be announced midmorning Monday, but a number of media outlets said Monday that the Democrats had won 308 of the 480 seats in the lower house to the LDP’s 119, citing local election results. Other parties and independent candidates won a total of 53.

The Democratic Party needed to win a simple majority of 241 seats in the lower house to ensure it could name the next prime minister. The 300-plus level would allow it and its two smaller allies the two-thirds majority they need in the lower house to pass bills.

“It’s a historic election in that a clear alternation of power has happened for the first time in the postwar period,” said Koichi Nakano, professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. “It’s hard to know whether this is going to lead to a real change in policy, at least for the short term.”

The loss was only the second the Liberal Democratic Party—traditionally the champion of big business and conservative interests—has suffered since it was founded in 1955. The only other time it was out of power was for less than 11 months in 1993-1994, and that was to a coalition of eight parties that quickly collapsed.

The LDP had survived through previous recessions in Japan but since then families have grown less secure about the future.

With only two weeks of official campaigning that focused mainly on broad-stroke appeals rather than specific policies, many analysts said the elections were not so much about issues as voters’ general desire for something new after more than a half century under the LDP.

“All the bad things over the last 54 years finally caught up to them,” said Fumio Morita, 45, who runs a bar in Tokyo. “It’s good that they are no longer in power.”

Japan has had three prime ministers in three years, all of whom were deeply unpopular for their perceived lack of leadership and for failing to get the country out of its deepening economic morass.

The LDP tried to fight back by reminding voters that their party led the nation out of the ashes of World War II. They also argued that the Democrats, who have never run the government, were irresponsible and inept.

Hatoyama’s party, which already controls the upper house with two allies, held 112 seats in the lower house before parliament was dissolved in July. The LDP had held 300 seats.

___

Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi, Kelly Olsen, Shino Yuasa and Tomoko Hosaka contributed to this report.

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Latest 15 of 27 Total Comments Show All

magpie at 11:36 AM JST - 31st August

What Japan eeds is a real good long look in the mirror. The country is falling to pieces on a deficit that it cannot mamage and run. There will inevitably be a long sustained period of pain, where it needs to shrink back the economy and waste. It will may mean a period of high unemployment as people need to be retrained to create new skills. Are the public prepared to accept that? The bureacrats known as the civil service that will have to execute such a plan...whoever thinks that they will execute the plan that will cut them off has to be smoking somthing that makes eveything that foreigners are supposedly distributing look mild!
bamboohat at 11:38 AM JST - 31st August

I give Hatoyama less then one year. He promised populist things he knows he can't fulfill, and trying to fund those promises will just crumple the economy. Let's just hope I'm wrong

Sounds another recently elected world leader that promised sweeping change, only to later realize it would only come at record deficit spending and record debt levels.

You can only live off deficit spending for so long.

Anyhow, good luck PM.
stirfry at 11:39 AM JST - 31st August

old wine in a new bottle
Bootsy at 11:41 AM JST - 31st August

Here comes the new boss ... same as the old boss?
bgaudry at 11:43 AM JST - 31st August

It was a good election though, very hard for some candidates and over rather quickly for others. Best election the Japanese have ever had.
notimpressed at 12:18 PM JST - 31st August

First real election Japan ever had, kind of. Can't hope for change if you try to cut the new-comers down without giving them a chance. I really wish them the best and hope they can fulfill what they promise. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of thier efforts. After all, it couldn't have got much worse, a different approach is what is needed.
Simon_Foston at 12:26 PM JST - 31st August

The DPJ will indeed need to move fast. The House of Councillors election is coming up next year, and if the voters don't feel some positive changes by then the LDP could make a recovery and regain the majority they lost in 2007. Then Japan would be stuck with the same divided Diet mess it's been in for the past two years.
frontandcentre at 01:03 PM JST - 31st August

What says it all is that the most persuasive argument that the LDP could make against the DPJ was a lack of experience...
escape_artist at 01:03 PM JST - 31st August

Not sure how Hatoyama & co. will do and can only hope the best, but one thing I CAN say about the election is that it keeps people's name kanji up to speed. My wife voted yesterday and was kinda ticked off after she got home because for the party choice she ended up writing a nobody name... one character from the main party in her mind, and the other character from the different party of a candidate in her mind. So she ended up writing a name that sounded sort of like both parties, but neither in the end exactly. A voided vote, in other words. She didn't realize her mistake until right after dropping the paper into the box. I'm sure she wasn't the only one making this kind of error.

Being able to simply circle or otherwise choose from a list of parties and candidates would have been a lot easier (though would be terribly expensive each election for the local and other govts). On the other hand, being forced, even in little ways like this, might help keep the mind young. Who knows?
elbudamexicano at 04:20 PM JST - 31st August

Good point escape artist! My wife is Japanese too, and many of my Japanese friends are complaining about the same thing. This can also be made easier as in Brazil, yes Brazil, where they have done away with any kind of paper ballots. The entire country has gone to the computer age, you just touch the name of the person, party you want to vote for, bingo! No writing, no making silly mistakes, of course they have a correct and cancel, just in case you change your mind.
Curmudgeon at 04:21 PM JST - 31st August

“The results are very severe,” Aso said. “There has been a deep dissatisfaction with our party.”

Talk about not getting it! Taro-sama, it is not necessarily the party that the Japanese people detest; it is you! Just in case it still hasn't sunk in, you lost because of your arrogance, blindness, stupidity and complete lack of humanity.
Shumatsu_Samurai at 06:08 PM JST - 31st August

viking, part of the problem is the bureaucracy, but the main problem are the politicians. The DPJ's plan to increase spending by 17 trillion yen is an example of this. It's not properly funded.

Until Japanese politicians balance the budget (as Fukuda was trying to do but sadly didn't have the chance long-term to do so) problems won't go away.
Simon_Foston at 11:24 PM JST - 31st August

Talk about not getting it! Taro-sama, it is not necessarily the party that the Japanese people detest; it is you! Just in case it still hasn't sunk in, you lost because of your arrogance, blindness, stupidity and complete lack of humanity.

Well, Aso was quite popular until he became Prime Minister and then he suffered the same monumental drop in support as Abe and Fukuda. Obviously he did himself no favours at all, but I think a lot of people were just as sick of the LDP as they were of him, as some comments from LDP leaders themselves indicate:

"It wasn't whether Aso was good or not (as prime minister), it was a matter of the LDP itself. Voters' disappointment at the LDP-led politics triggered (the party's defeat), and that's it." (Former Agriculture Minister Shigeru Ishiba)

I agree with this reflection, personally. After all, it was the LDP Diet members who picked Aso for the job.
realist at 12:17 AM JST - 1st September

Congratulations to the Japanese people for joining the rest of the Free World at last and changing it government! I am completely elated at the demise of Soka Gakkai Alliance of scoundrels frpm political power at last. They vertainly got the comuppance they so richly deserved. Now lets get behind the new government and support them in their efforts to change japan for the better. I hope they start with a Bill of Human Rights, and make discrimination punishable by imprisonment and heavy fines. RThey would rake in plenty of dosh that way.
adm_kenshin at 06:52 PM JST - 2nd September

All of those who are against massive deficit spending: Do you have an alternative that doesn't imply radical reduction of people's living standard?

For those of you suggesting that unemployed should be retrained: retrained for what? There are not enough new jobs to soak up the unemployment, without government creating new ones.

Without deficit spending, the economy would collapse, as the purchasing power of the consumer class is not enough to buy the production of the factories. Still, deficit spending is not a long-term solution, as eventually it will lead to hyperinflation, when foreign countries are no longer interested in buying the debt.

Money, mankind's oldest and most revered tool, have reached its limit. It's time to try something new.

realist: The LDP, for better or worse, have kept Japan rather free actually, at least up until 1999 and the terrorism hysteria. I hope the DPJ will continue with these liberal policies. Otherwise we will get moralist hell as in Sweden.