TOKYO: Just months after Japan’s opposition won a landmark election victory, a misstep has raised the possibility of fresh polls and set back hopes the country is developing a genuine two-party system, analysts say.

The resurgent opposition succeeded in suspending a naval mission supporting the US-led ‘war on terror’, but it faces a key test starting this week as the government pushes a bill to restart the deployment through parliament.

Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), came under fire for considering an offer of a grand coalition with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s bloc.

Ozawa, a former ruling party insider once famed for his political acumen, abruptly offered his resignation to his upset DPJ colleagues but then retracted it.

The DPJ’s triumph in July elections prompted “talk of a change in government and confirmed for many that Ozawa was a master political strategist,” said Brad Glosserman, director of the Hawaii-based Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum.

But his “reversals in the last weeks made him look feckless and uncertain,” he said.

“The recent developments have reinforced the image of the DPJ as a party that is incoherent and immature. Ozawa’s rebuke exposed the party’s divisions, long evident but never so plainly visible,” Glosserman said.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled Japan for all but 10 months since its creation in 1955 with a support base of business, bureaucrats and rural voters.

The LDP was ousted from the top position in the upper house of parliament for the first time in July elections for the less powerful chamber amid a voter backlash over scandals under then prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Abe, an outspoken conservative, resigned in September, citing in part the opposition’s refusal to extend the Indian Ocean mission, which provided fuel and other support to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Ozawa has called for Japan not to take part in ‘American wars’. He has also pledged to use the new power in the parliament, or Diet, to address concerns about a widening income gap, which he has blamed on the LDP’s free market reforms.

“Forming a grand coalition betrays popular will expressed in the election.

It also means suicide of the Diet, since the Diet without opposition will lose its function of checks and balances,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, professor of politics at Hokkaido University.

“The most important meaning of the election result was that we had come very close to a two-party system in global standards,” he said, “in which a conservative party and a centre-left party struggle for the government.”

The divided parliament is a unique situation for Japan, where the LDP was long used to pushing through bills automatically.

The LDP could use its control of the lower house to ram through the bill supporting US-led forces in Afghanistan.

The opposition has warned of a censure motion against the government if it resorts to such drastic measures. The LDP in turn has threatened that a censure motion could lead the government to call a snap general election, which does not have to be held until September 2009.

Polls published on Tuesday showed that support for the Fukuda cabinet has slipped since the failed coalition bid but that most voters did not trust the opposition and were critical of Ozawa.

“Japanese people are used to a one-party system,” said Hidekazu Kawai, honorary professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.

“It’s now time for Japan to make a decision. The next election will be a big opportunity for Japanese voters to choose a one-party system or a two-party system,” said Kawai.—AFP