Parliamentary elections:

Japan heads for historic change

JAPAN: Japan heads for elections Sunday that look set to shift the political landscape of the world’s second largest economy, with a centre-left party ending half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule.

Polls predict the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will win easily, perhaps in a landslide, against the business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso.

The DPJ is likely to scoop up 300 of the 480 lower house seats, more than doubling its strength, the Sankei Shimbun daily said Tuesday after a mammoth survey of 44,000 voters it conducted with Fuji Television.

If the DPJ pulls off the victory, it will make history in a country whose electorate has been famously risk-averse and where conservative rule has been entrenched since it steered Japan out of the ashes of World War II.

For over five decades, the LDP has been part of an “iron triangle” with big business and the state bureaucracy that presided over Japan’s miracle run to become an economic giant whose corporate titans remain world-leaders.

Now, in far gloomier times, the DPJ has promised new, more people-centred solutions to a different set of problems a deep sense of economic malaise and social stagnation that have eaten away at Japan since the early 1990s.

Japan’s economy now slowly emerging from its latest, deepest recession will be eclipsed by neighbouring giant China as the world’s number two economy as early as next year, the International Monetary Fund has predicted.

With low birth rates and the world’s highest life expectancy, Japan’s population of 127 million is rapidly greying and set to shrink by one quarter by 2050, leaving fewer workers to support a growing number of elderly.

Tokyo, Tuesday, AFP

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[ Fact box]

Japan’s main political parties

LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY LDP : Japan’s biggest political force and a champion of conservative values.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF JAPAN: The main opposition party is centre-left but draws members from a diverse background

NEW KOMEITO PARTY: The centre-right New Komeito Party, linked to a Buddhist mass organisation, is the LDP’s junior coalition partner. which has about 400,000 members.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY: The only major party led by a woman, Mizuho Fukushima, the SDP has called for better social welfare.

JAPANESE COMMUNIST PARTY: The Communist Party was founded in 1922 but legalised only after World War II. It was associated with the labour and student protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

PEOPLE’S NEW PARTY: The People’s New Party is a centre-right party with five parliamentarians that was formed in the wake of a 2005 snap election to protest against plans to privatise the massive Japanese postal system. AFP

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