Japan’s LDP gets mandate for radical policy change

Published on 17/12/2012 00:00

Japan’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has surged back to power just three years after a devastating defeat, giving former prime minister Shinzo Abe a chance to push his tough security agenda with China and radical economic 
recipe.

A TV Asahi projection based on counted votes from yesterday’s polls gave the LDP at least 291 seats in parliament’s 480-member lower house, and together with its small ally, the New Komeito party, a two-thirds majority needed to override, on most matters, the upper house, where no party has majority.

That would help break a policy deadlock that has plagued the world’s third biggest economy since 2007.

“We have promised to pull Japan out of deflation and correct a strong yen,” Mr Abe said on live television.

“We need to do this. The same goes for national security and diplomacy.”

An LDP win will now usher in a government committed to a tough stance in a territorial row with China, a pro-nuclear energy policy despite last year’s Fukushima disaster and a potentially risky prescription for hyper-easy monetary policy and big fiscal spending to beat deflation and tame a strong yen.

The projection based on votes already counted from yesterday’s polls gave the Liberal Democratic Party almost 300 states seats in parliament’s 480-member lower house, and together with the New Komeito party, the size of majority needed to override, on most matters, the upper house. .

That would help break a policy deadlock that has plagued the world’s third biggest economy since 2007.

“We have promised to pull Japan out of deflation and correct a strong yen,” Mr Abe said on live television. “We need to do this. The same goes for national security and diplomacy.”

Parliament is expected to vote Mr Abe in as prime minister on December 26.