Word: ldp
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...Democrats are made up of an inexperienced group of left-wing activists and LDP defectors. The party is just 11 years old, and only a handful have served in top government positions...
...Elsewhere, victorious DPJ candidates lifted their arms and hoarsely shouted the celebratory phrase "banzai" after exit polls showed Japan's main opposition party blasted the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from its virtually untested 54-year reign. Polls indicate the DPJ's historic win will likely hand the party more than 300 of the 480 seats in the Diet's lower house, while the LDP is expected to get about 100 - just one-third of what it had before Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved parliament in July and called the Aug. 30 election. If the DPJ lands more than...
...defeated Aso appeared before television media and assumed responsibility for his party's crushing blow. Expressing his grief over the results, Aso said that he would step down as president of the LDP, requesting that an election be held as soon as possible for new party leadership. Media reports say that he has relinquished his post. "We could not wipe away the resentment that the LDP accumulated over the years," he said. "I feel we were destined [to be defeated]." Many well-known incumbents lost their own local elections, such as Fukuoka prefecture's Taku Yamasaki (a former minister once...
...unprecedented 14 million votes were cast in advance of Sunday's election, accounting for about 13% of all eligible voters. And voter turnout is expected to reach 70% - the highest in nearly 20 years. As exit polls came out around the nation, television media tended to focus on which LDP candidates lost - marking LDP incumbents with red batsu or Xs - rather than focus on the DPJ winners, reflecting a widely held belief that Sunday's landslide win is less a vote of confidence in the DPJ's ability to effect change than a show of frustration over the LDP...
...Former Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi delayed the inevitable collapse of the LDP for five years," says Curtis, who says that after Koizumi left office the failure of his reforms became more apparent. Following the end of Koizumi's term in 2006, Japan has had three prime ministers in as many years. "The public was waiting for chance to show their dissatisfaction, which is why they had no election, because [Shinzo] Abe, [Yasuo] Fukuda and Aso knew that they would lose. So, they put it off until the very last moment," says Curtis. "And lo and behold, they're going...