Japan Elections:Liberal Democratic Party wins

Posted on December 17, 2012 by sagarmedia

December 17, 2012

December 17, 2012 by sagarmedia

Japan Elections:Liberal Democratic Party wins

Liberal Democratic Party led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has won an absolute majority in Sunday’s Lower House elections. LDP has won 277 seats, more than the absolute majority of 266, in the 480-member House of Representatives. LDP and New Komeito are short of a majority in the upper house. LDP’s coalition partner, New Komeito, has won 28 seats. Combined, they have 305 seats. LDP President Abe told media that the LDP and New Komeito have already decided to form a coalition government and will soon have policy talks.He  said his party will seek the support of as many parties as possible in the upper house on each policy and will ask parties with the same ideas and policies to cooperate.This win is a dramatic comeback for the party that built postwar Japan, but was ejected from power in 2009
The Democratic Party of Japan led by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has suffered a crushing defeat. Noda says he accepts the verdict gravely and will resign as party leader to take responsibility.
Absolute majority allows the party to allocate chairpersons to all 17 standing committees of the chamber and also secure a majority in all of them. It is now focused on whether the two parties will win a total of 320, the two-thirds majority that allow bills to be enacted in a re-vote if they are rejected by the upper house.
Newly-formed Japan Restoration Party led by former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has won 43 seats.Democrats won only 44 of the seats that had been decided, putting them in a dead heat for a distant second place with the news Japan Restoration Party, which was started by Osaka’s popular mayor. It was a crushing defeat for a party whose victory three years ago was heralded as the start of a vigorous two-party democracy.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda resigned as head of the Democratic Party to take responsibility for the loss, despite holding onto to his own seat in Chiba, outside Tokyo.
“We failed to meet the people’s hopes after the change of government three years and four months ago,” Noda told reporters.