The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of the current prime minister Abe Shinzo suffered a major setback in the Upper House from Sunday's (yesterday's) election, which took away the majority from their hands and delivered it into the opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), led by Ozawa Ichiro, a coalition of moderates, former socialists and conservatives. In the past, the DPJ (founded in 1996) could not muster the votes to overcome the ever powerful LDP, whose strongholds of power extended beyond big cities and into rural areas. This time around, the disenchanted voters gave their voice to the opposition after a major government bungling of national pension records and a series of scandals and corruptions.
Unlike past prime ministers who had resigned in the face of such loss, Abe defiantly decided to stay the course as prime minister. Japanese law spelled out the Lower House of the Parliament as the one choosing the prime minister. The LDP has the majority in the Lower House, which is considered to be stronger and more influential than the Upper House. Inheriting the parliamentary majorities from his most popular predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, Abe passed through legislations laws that concerned patriotism in schools and the plan to elevate Japanese military and to revise the pacifist Constitution. The recent loss will surely hold his future plans in check as the majority Upper House will be able to deny him the easy route.
Abe's recent campaign with trademark soundbytes of making Japan into a "beautiful country" has been mocked by some opposition and even his own fellow LDP politicans. He has been viewed as out of touch with the rest of the country, forgetting about the bread and butter issues, the basic needs of the people. His main theme put the emphasis on revising the pacifist Constitution, but with recent tides against him, he appeared to want to appease the mass by switching it to the economy, which came too little too late. The opposition, meanwhile, had made economy the main issue in the first place, and voters obviously rewarded DPJ's effort and handed them the Upper House.
(Photo credit: Sasaki Ko for the New York Times.)
