July 31, 2007	Tuesday	Rajab 15, 1428

TOKYO: Hiroshi Yoda, 60, hopes the stunning defeat for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Sunday’s House of Councillors election will be a wake-up call for influential politicians who he says have lost touch with the public.

“I have always been a supporter of the LDP believing it is the only party that has experience in running the country. But during the last few years I have got so disgusted with the arrogance of the government that I decided to go against it,” explained the businessman.

Political experts, Yoda points out, could be deeply disappointed by the outcome. Japan’s beleaguered Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has refused to step down and take responsibility for the devastating loss of his LDP party.

Abe, 52, Japan’s first prime minister born after World War II and a hawk, talked to the press on Monday of plans to reshuffle his Cabinet at an “appropriate time”. Last night, while conceding defeat, Abe also spoke of carrying on his mandate of building a “Beautiful Japan”, a notion that voters have rejected in the first place, experts point out.

“Yesterday’s election marks the worse defeat for the LDP since its inception in 1945. The voters have said a vehement ‘No’ to Abe and his policies, but he just does not get it,” said Gerald Curtis, one of the leading experts on Japanese domestic politics, and now a professor at Columbia University in New York.

Curtis told the press on Monday that the election results — in which the opposition parties won 68 seats, the LDP 37 and its coalition partner, Kometio a dismal nine — represents anger and disappointment with the government.

The coalition needed 64 seats to keep its majority in the Upper House. Half of the 242 seats were up for grabs.

A simmering issue on the table was the pension dispute. More than 50 million pension premiums were “left missing” by the Social Insurance Agency, a situation that was brought to public attention by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), after Abe had tried to sweep it under the table.

“The election result is a protest against Abe. By refusing to step down, I envisage a difficult political period for Japan till the end of Abe’s term in 2009,” said Curtis.

Indeed, with the main opposition party, the DPJ, now controlling the Upper House, experts see a weakened Abe struggling to get approval for reforms that he has promoted as part of his prescription for Japan’s revival in global politics.

A key test is the upcoming extension in December of the Special Measures Law on Anti-Terrorism that was passed by the Japanese Diet in October 2006 to provide logistical support to U.S. military activities to contain global terrorism. The DJP opposed the law in the Diet.

If the bill fails to get approval, experts expect that Abe’s plans to change the Japanese Constitution to allow Japan to have a military and enter global politics with the United States will also be put on the back burner.

Yet another pressing concern is North Korea where Abe’s hard-line stance is increasingly isolating Japan in the six-party talks with the United States, China and South Korea moving ahead on containing Pyongyang’s nuclear programme through negotiations.

Abe, an advocate of boosting ties with India as a means of tackling the power balance in Asia against China’s looming influence, is also expected to face lukewarm support on that ground in parliament.

Harumi Arima, a political commentator with close connections in Nagatacho, the district in Tokyo where the Japanese Diet is located, explains Abe has been unsuccessful in trying to win support through his conservative ideology.

“The voting results showed using the North Korea card did not work for Abe. The stark message is people want practical, honest solutions that will secure their future. Not a vague nationalistic ideology they do not understand,” he told the news agency.

Arima points to landmark voter patterns such as on the island of Shikoku, where election results show the LDP lost all seats despite being a stronghold in the region.

That, says Arima, is a vivid illustration of how the LDP has alienated rural voters by pushing ahead with economic reforms that have left a growing income-gap between them and urban centres.

A radical US-style revision plan under Junichiro Koizumi, predecessor of Abe, has led to erosion of some of Japan’s much admired post-war economic achievements such as its egalitarian society.

Today, for example, unemployment among the middle-aged hovers around four per cent from almost zero, as well as high suicides rates — more than 30,000 annually — is related mostly due to financial debt and insecure future.

The privatisation of Japan’s famed health care system has also changed the old policy where almost 90 per cent of its population was guaranteed some kind of medical insurance, leaving an anxious society.

“Ideology stemming from Abe’s pedigree background is not the answer to these growing issues,” said Arima. “Abe can survive by coming with practical solutions. I doubt he can manage this.” —Dawn/The IPS News Service