Word: abely
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...that simple. While the public clearly voted against the unpopular Abe, it's far from obvious what or whom they voted for. The DPJ's success is tenuous, and its approval ratings remain barely higher than that of the scandal-ridden LDP. The public "did not say yes to the DPJ," said Gerald Curtis, a Japanese-politics expert at Columbia University. "They voted against Prime Minister Abe, to get Abe out of office...
...Even that doesn't seem likely to happen soon. Abe is reshuffling his Cabinet, but he says he has no intention of stepping down himself, and no one within the LDP has the stomach to launch a coup. But while he grimly holds on and the LDP squabbles over its future, the DPJ faces urgent problems of its own. Though it now holds the Upper House, the ruling coalition of the LDP and New Komeito maintain a majority in the more powerful Lower House, which will continue at least until elections in September 2009. DPJ officials have said they...
...will have Japan. Throughout most of the postwar era, entrenched bureaucrats and the LDP élite plotted the course of the country through backroom deals and alliances. But in recent years the country's political landscape has begun to change, thanks largely to the dynamic style of Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who bypassed the old guard and took his case for reform directly to the voters. That was progress, but what's still missing is an alternative to the LDP, something that is needed even more now that the ruling coalition is in danger of unraveling...
...truly organizes itself as a functional political party, it'll be a repeat of their last Upper House victory, which was followed by a loss," says Jun Iio of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. Instead of simply shutting down the government in an effort to force Abe out, the DPJ should relax its rhetoric and let the Prime Minister continue to hang himself. They can earn public trust by forging alliances with sympathetic LDP members to set an agenda that responds to the economic concerns of ordinary voters. It won't be easy given its internal divisions...
...SHINZO ABE, Prime Minister of Japan, who refused to resign after his Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the upper house for the first time since...