Word: ldp
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...Ozawa's no-show aptly symbolizes the anticlimactic letdown that Japan - and the DPJ - is experiencing after an extraordinary parliamentary election. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, suffered the worst defeat in its 52-year history. Meanwhile, by taking 60 out of 121 seats up for grabs, the DPJ became the first opposition party to control the Upper House. The results seem to suggest that, after decades as a virtual single-party state, Japan has finally produced a viable opposition and a true two-party democracy, creating an environment where backroom politics would fade...
...that simple. While the public clearly voted against the unpopular Abe, it's far from obvious what or whom they voted for. The DPJ's success is tenuous, and its approval ratings remain barely higher than that of the scandal-ridden LDP. The public "did not say yes to the DPJ," said Gerald Curtis, a Japanese-politics expert at Columbia University. "They voted against Prime Minister Abe, to get Abe out of office...
...Even that doesn't seem likely to happen soon. Abe is reshuffling his Cabinet, but he says he has no intention of stepping down himself, and no one within the LDP has the stomach to launch a coup. But while he grimly holds on and the LDP squabbles over its future, the DPJ faces urgent problems of its own. Though it now holds the Upper House, the ruling coalition of the LDP and New Komeito maintain a majority in the more powerful Lower House, which will continue at least until elections in September 2009. DPJ officials have said they...
...coherent platform to voters. Once the standard-bearer for young urbanites and reform, under Ozawa the party has styled itself as a defender of rural Japan, promising subsidies and protectionism for farmers. That was a winning strategy - in the July 29 election, the DPJ swept the countryside, once an LDP stronghold - but it contradicts the beliefs of reform-oriented DPJ members. The party is riddled with such fractures, and many members resent Ozawa, who isn't nicknamed "The Destroyer" because he plays well with others. Ironically, the stress of coping with victory could tear the party apart as competing factions...
Whatever happens, most observers agree that Abe and the LDP lost by focusing on revising Japan's pacifist constitution and making education more patriotic while ordinary Japanese were more worried about the country's growing income gap and its faulty pension system. Whether or not Abe resigns, the Japanese government will have to put aside its grander ambitions and make pocketbook issues a priority. "Abe couldn't figure out how to balance the people's interests with his own," says Etsushi Tanifuji, deputy dean of politics at Tokyo's Waseda University. Fortunately for Japan, the democratic system...