Japan's Koizumi wins election landslide

[tritsofme]

TOKYO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's long-ruling party won a stunning landslide victory in Sunday's general election, Japanese media said, giving the U.S. ally a broad mandate to press on with market-friendly reforms.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which has been governing in coalition, was assured of winning at least 276 seats in the 480-seat chamber, projections by public broadcaster NHK showed.

That was up from 249 seats before the election. Media exit polls showed the party winning more than 300 seats.

NHK also said the LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, had locked in a total of 304 seats, allowing them to dominate the powerful lower chamber by having a majority on all committees.

The result was a striking victory for Koizumi, a media-savvy maverick who gambled his career in a populist appeal to voters to back his plan to privatize Japan's postal system, a financial services giant that includes a postal savings bank and insurance business with a combined $3 trillion in assets.

<SNIP>
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-09-11T161028Z_01_SCH017657_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-JAPAN-ELECTION-DC.XML

[non sociopath skin]

1. ... So Japan remains a one-party business-friendly state.

... Hey, let's crack open the Coca-Cola and the Freedom Fries....

The Skin

[bluestateguy]

2. I used to like this guy

Then again, I used to like Tony Blair too.

[Wabbajack]

6. Used to Like him?

Why?

[Maple]

3. Well the opposition

can never get it's act together.

[NEOBuckeye]

4. That sounds all too familiar.

Wish it were said of the GOP, rather than the Dems, though.

[Maple]

5. Yeah it does

Luckily for me, in Canada it refers to the Conservatives.

[Art_from_Ark]

7. Whenever a strong or outspoken opposition leader appears

such as Kiyomi Tsujimoto or Naoto Kan, there is always a convenient "scandal" that comes up and forces them out. Compound that with the splintering of left-leaning votes (three left-leaning parties), and the funky way that election districts are set up, and you have a system that is designed to keep the ruling party ruling and the opposition party(s) on the sidelines.

[psychopomp]

9. I'd like to know your thoughts on the privatization of the postal savings

and insurance system. I have to admit I don't know enough about it but my initial suspicions are tempered by the knowlege that JP is a more or less socialist country so the profiteering may be mitigated by real stimulus to the economic growth engine.

Is that likely?

[Art_from_Ark]

11. There doesn't seem to be any compelling reason for privatization

Koizumi made this a benchmark for his "Keizai Kakumei" ("economic reform") program, but it seems to be just another scheme to take control of the post office out of the public's hands. I don't have any fantasies about privatization being a panacea for Japan's economic woes, especially considering that a large part of these woes can be traced to the mismanagement of privately-run banks, especially during the so-called "bubble economy".

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Any word on what the turn-out was?

Was it a majoirity of a minority of the voters, as in most recent Jpn elections?

If I were a Jpn voter, I'd be pretty disgusted with the parties there. Maybe all the discontented people over there should just vote Communist and give the LDP and other dinosaurs a scare. :-)

[Art_from_Ark]

15. According to Yahoo Japan, it was the largest turnout ever-- 67.51%

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20050912-00000201-yom-pol

[Maple]

10. They could fix that

by becoming one party, with one unassailable leader, but somehow they never do.

You'd think after all these years, they'd want to solve this and give themselves a fighting chance....

[Art_from_Ark]

16. Easier said than done

Naoto Kan was a squeaky clean leader of the Minshu-to -- but he was behind a few months in his payment of his national pension premiums (like most politicians are). Since he was the head of the party, though, he was forced to resign. A sacrificial lamb was offered on the LDP side, to, *cough*, balance things out.

For her part, Kiyomi Tsujimoto was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq War in the Japanese Diet. She was ousted because she hired "too many" assistants with the money she was allotted.

The Japanese proverb says "The nail that stands out gets hammered down". That certainly seems to be true with the Minshu-to.

[Maple]

18. I agree

but it's not like they haven't had time to figure out these tricks and traps, and avoid them

[Art_from_Ark]

19. Here's another problem

The Japan Communist Party ("Kyosan-to") rarely gets more than 5% in an election, but in some districts it siphons off enough support from the main left party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The other left-leaning party, the Shamin-to, consists of remnants of the old Shakai-to (Socialist Party), which at one time was the main opposition to the ever-ruling LDP. The Communist Party claims that the Minshu-to is just "LDP Lite", and even though they agree with the Minshu-to on a lot of things, they insist on keeping their own identity. I don't know what the Shamin-to's raison d'etre is, considering that they are lucky to win 2 of 480 seats. But they still keep plugging away, independent of the Minshu-to.

Then there's the problem with funky election districts, which I won't go into now because I have to work!

[Wabbajack]

21. What's with the funky election districts?

[Art_from_Ark]

22. Funky election districts:

Apparently most election districts have not been reapportioned since WWII, while there has been a major shift of population to the cities in the meantime. Thus, some rural districts (which overwhelmingly tend to support the ruling party) have a much larger proportion of representation in the Diet (Parliament) than their population warrants.

Also, there are some election districts where one votes for the party, not the candidate, and there are often two (and sometimes more) winners in one race (and an LDP candidate is almost always among the winners).

[Wabbajack]

25. Not reapportioned in 50 years?

Please tell me someone over there is raising hell about that?!

[Art_from_Ark]

26. Apparently someone has been raising hell about it

They were working on this as least as far back as 1994, but it seems like it's taken about a decade just to reapportion 68 districts in 20 of the country's 47 prefectures (provinces)

http://www.election.co.jp/database/2005/0818.html

"These things take time" :freak:

[Wabbajack]

27. Thanks I wish I could read that :)

[Art_from_Ark]

28. Here's a rough translation for you

The portion of the Public Elections Law that deals with the reapportionment, etc., of House of Representative (=Congressional) districts was promulgated on July 31, 2002, and put into effect on August 31 of the same year.

Following the recommendations for reapportionment, this revised law has been used by the Council for Establishing the House of Representative Districts to reapportion 68 districts in 20 (of the 47) prefectures.

In addition, the number of representatives in the proportional districts has been revised based on the 2000 national census, with the South Kanto district gaining one representative for a new total of 22, and the Kinki district losing one representative for a new total of 29.

[Art_from_Ark]

20. There were actually 6 or 7 "opposition" parties

At least, that's what the local newspaper is showing. Talk about splintering the vote! There were the three regular opposition parties, plus three or four more parties that will fade away after they've had their 15 minutes of fame. Some of these "opposition" parties consisted of former (?) members of the ruling party. Was the Minshu-to "John Andersoned"?

At the same time, the ultra-right-wing Komei-to seems to have graciously given much support to its comrade-in-arms, the LDP.

In summary:
Right-wing vote-- mostly united
Left-wing vote-- splintered 6 or 7 ways

I think this is a classic example of why a multi-party system might not be such a good idea.

[moondust]

8. If this is the Liberal Democratic Party

what could the Conservative Republican Party (or its equivalent) be like? What's in a name?

[Art_from_Ark]

13. What's in a name, indeed

I believe the current "Liberal-Democratic Party" can trace its roots back to the merger of the "Jiyu-to" with the "Minshu-to" back in the 1950s. According to Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, "jiyu" can mean "freedom" or "liberty", while "jiyu-shugi" is translated as "liberalism". "Minshu" is a shortened form of "minshu-shugi", or "democracy". Hence the name "Liberal-Democratic" Party.

It's interesting to note that in recent years, there have been other "Jiyu-to"s and there is currently another "Minshu-to".

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. So many of the so-called "opposition parties" are

really break-away LDP factions built around personalities rather than ideologies. They tend to come and go within a year or two.

[Art_from_Ark]

24. Two or three of this election's "opposition" parties were like that

Here today, gone tomorrow.

[oasis]

14. Conservative's would priviatize their grandmas for a buck profit. In

Koizumi's case, "a yen profit".

[Qibing Zero]

17. "Media-savvy". That really says it all now, doesn't it? nt