Japan's Aug. 30 National Elections: Parties, Policies Primer
Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s 104 million voters go thepolls Aug. 30 to elect 480 members to the lower house ofparliament, the chamber that chooses the prime minister.
The following outlines election themes and key policies ofthe ruling Liberal Democratic Party and main oppositionDemocratic Party of Japan. Also included are election facts andmini profiles of Prime Minister Taro Aso and opposition leaderYukio Hatoyama.
Main Themes:
The DPJ is bidding to become the first political party tosingle-handedly unseat the LDP since the latter’s founding in1955. A coalition overthrew the ruling party in 1993 only tocollapse 10 months later. The race pits two political bluebloodswith a historic grudge that includes an ironic twist: Hatoyama’sgrandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, was the LDP’s first premier,unseating Aso’s grandfather, Shigeru Yoshida.
Aso is the fourth prime minister since the last lower houseelection in September 2005. Then-premier Junichiro Koizumi ledthe ruling party to a landslide victory, securing with coalitionpartner New Komeito a two-thirds majority. In September 2006 hehanded the reins to Shinzo Abe, who stepped down a year laterpleading ill health. His successor, Yasuo Fukuda, also lasted ayear before quitting amid political deadlock and party disarray.
Since taking office in September 2008, Aso has had threecabinet ministers resign due to scandal and seen his approvalratings collapse as he struggled to revive the world’s second-biggest economy. Japan is just emerging from its worst recessionsince World War II and the country faces record unemployment,soaring welfare costs and a shrinking, aging population.
DPJ Platform:
Hatoyama’s party says it will increase spending on childcare and tuition aid, lower gasoline taxes, eliminate highwaytolls and curtail the power of the nation’s bureaucrats.
The DPJ’s platform calls for making public high school freeas of April 2010 and eventually spending 5.5 trillion yen ($58.5billion) a year on child support. It also pledges to lower thecorporate tax for small and medium-sized companies to 11 percentfrom 18 percent, while providing 100,000 yen a month to job-seekers enrolled in a training program.
To finance a economic aid package that would total 16.8trillion yen by 2013, the DPJ says it can pay for all of it byeliminating 9.1 trillion yen in unnecessary spending, tappingspecial accounts managed by the nation’s bureaucrats andabolishing some tax deductions.
LDP leaders ridicule the platform as making promises thatcan’t be kept without raising the nation’s sales tax from thecurrent 5 percent, something Hatoyama has said he won’t do.
“What kind of magic is the DPJ going to use to fund itsrandom spending?” Koizumi asked at an Aug. 17 rally.
Party leaders have wavered on whether they will have toincrease government bond issuances to pay for the programs at atime when the country’s public debt is the world’s largest,approaching 200 percent of gross domestic product.
Hatoyama on Aug. 23 said he wouldn’t sell more governmentdebt this year, while DPJ policy chief Masayuki Naoshima lastmonth said Japan may be forced to should there be a need foradditional economic stimulus.
LDP Platform:
The LDP pledges to boost growth to 2 percent by 2011,create two million jobs in the next three years and increasedisposable household income by 1 million yen in the next decade.The party platform also calls for eliminating pre-school fees by2012 and reviewing the nation’s tax system, including a possibleincrease in the sales tax “without delay after the economyrecovers.”
Aso’s party also seeks to increase demand for eco-friendlyautomobiles, reduce the number of civil servants and cut thenumber of seats in the lower house by 10 percent as of 2011.
Aso has committed 25 trillion yen in three economicstimulus packages to revive the economy, which grew anannualized 3.7 percent in the three months ended June 30, thefirst growth in five quarters. The Bank of Japan estimates thatgross domestic product will shrink 3.4 percent in the currentfiscal year.
Foreign Policy:
Foreign policy since the end of World War II has beencentered around an alliance with the U.S. that keeps about50,000 American troops stationed in Japan. DPJ leaders includingHatoyama have called for a less subordinate relationship withthe U.S. as well as reducing the estimated $10.3 billion cost oftransferring 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014.
The opposition opposed dispatching Japanese naval refuelingvessels to the Indian Ocean to help the U.S.-led war inAfghanistan. Aso has criticized the DPJ for its stance on theU.S.-Japan alliance.
Both parties have called for a firm stance against NorthKorea for its recent nuclear test and missile launches.
Election Facts:
The LDP held 303 of the 480 seats in the lower house beforeAso dissolved parliament and called the election in July, andthree legislators have since left. The DPJ, which is already thebiggest party in the less-powerful upper house, held 112 seatswhen parliament was dissolved and has added three. LDP coalitionpartner New Komeito holds 31 seats. The remaining seats aredivided among smaller parties and independents, including ninefor the Japan Communist Party and seven for the SocialDemocratic Party.
The eligible voting age in Japan is 20, and about 104million people can vote. Voter turnout in the 2005 lower houseelection was 67.5 percent.
A total of 1,374 candidates are running for 300 single-seatconstituencies and 180 seats divided into 11 regional blocksthat are distributed to parties based on their proportionalshare of the vote. Japanese cast two votes: one for a person andone for a party, and parties can put favored candidates who lostin their constituency into a proportional seat.
Aso Profile:
The son of a wealthy cement magnate, the 68-year-old Aso isa fourth-generation politician with ties to the Imperial family.Grandfather Shigeru Yoshida was prime minister for seven years,the longest-serving postwar premier. Yoshida’s grandfather wasToshimichi Okubo, one of the founders of the Meiji governmentthat overthrew Japan’s last shogun.
Aso is a fan of Japanese comic books -- known as “manga”-- and promotes the country’s pop culture as a means to broadenits global appeal. He was a member of Japan’s 1976 Olympic clay-pigeon shooting team and studied economics at StanfordUniversity in California and the London School of Economics.
Before becoming prime minister, Aso was foreign ministerunder Koizumi and Abe, and has also held two other cabinetpositions. First elected to parliament in 1979, he has been re-elected nine times. A Catholic, he is married with one son andone daughter. His sister is married to a cousin of EmperorAkihito.
Hatoyama Profile:
Hatoyama, 62, is a scion of Japan’s most prominentpolitical family, whose great-grandfather was speaker of thelower house of parliament, grandfather was prime minister andfather was foreign minister. His younger brother, Kunio, is asenior member of the LDP.
Yukio Hatoyama was first elected to parliament in 1986 as amember of the Liberal Democrats. He left the ruling party in1993 along with some other lawmakers to form a small party thatwas part of the coalition that overthrew the LDP later that year.In 1998, he helped create the DPJ, which eventually merged withthe Liberal Party, founded by fellow ex-LDP legislator IchiroOzawa.
Hatoyama, who previously led the DPJ from 1999 to 2002, wasdeputy chief cabinet secretary in the eight-party coalitiongovernment of Morihiro Hosokawa. Hatoyama became head of themain opposition in May after Ozawa was forced to step down dueto a campaign funding scandal. Hatoyama’s own finances cameunder scrutiny in June, when he admitted his political fundingbody used dead people to make false contribution statements.
A graduate of the University of Tokyo with a Ph.D. inengineering from Stanford, Hatoyama is married to a former stageactress and has one son. His family is one of Japan’s wealthiest,thanks in part to his mother, Yasuko, the eldest daughter of thefounder of Bridgestone Corp., the world’s largest tiremaker.
To contact the reporter on this story:John Brinsley in Tokyo at jbrinsley@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 27, 2009 20:53 EDTSource: Bloomberg
« Back to World News
Related News
-
Japan's New Prime Minister Takes Office, Ending an Era Aug 27, 2009 @ 09:20 PM
TOKYO — Yukio Hatoyama, who led his party to a landmark victory in elections last month, took office as prime minister and named a cabinet of loyal allies on Wednesday, promising to bring change to a country mired in stagnation after a half-century of virtually uninterrupted, one-party rule.
-
Japan's New Prime Minister Takes Office Aug 27, 2009 @ 09:20 PM
TOKYO — Yukio Hatoyama, who led his Democratic Party to a landmark victory in elections last month, took office as prime minister on Wednesday, ending a half-century of virtually uninterrupted one-party rule in Japan.
-
Japan's ruling party could re-emerge after losses Aug 27, 2009 @ 09:20 PM
TOKYO — For the past half-century, the Liberal Democratic Party has called the shots in Japan, naming the prime ministers, filling the Cabinets and setting the national agenda. Now, it is learning to look at itself in a new way — as the opposition.
-
After Decades, Japan Prepares for Likely New Ruling Party Aug 27, 2009 @ 09:20 PM
TOKYO — Japanese voters finally seem willing to oust the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party. But after decades of a virtual one-party state, the Japanese now are confronting what a change of power would actually mean.
-
Japan Prepares for Likely New Ruling Party Aug 27, 2009 @ 09:20 PM
TOKYO — Japanese voters finally seem willing to oust the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party. But after decades of a virtual one-party state, the Japanese now are confronting what a change of power would actually mean.
