David Warren

An epoch-making election result

We all woke up on Monday morning to an election result that can genuinely be described as epoch-making.  The opposition Democratic Party of Japan has decisively beaten the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power for most of the last 54 years, and has never been seriously under threat of defeat before.   Records tumbled all night.   Record turnout (nearly 70%).   Record size of victory (no winning party in the Lower House has ever had more than 300 seats before).  Record number of women MPs (though still very low by European standards - 54).

Now we are moving into the phase in which the new Government party will be sorting out how it intends to govern and specifically how it is going to tackle the changes it wants to make to the machinery of government.  The DPJ have been swept into office in part with a mandate to reform the relationship between politicians and the powerful bureaucracy.  Everyone will be watching closely - as they do after elections the world over - how the opposition make the transition from saying what needs to be done to actually doing it. 

But the consensus is that this really is a watershed in post-war Japanese politics - a rejection of the old political system, which was perceived as out of touch with voters' concerns, and a call for change - even if there isn't necessarily agreement on precisely what sort of change people want to see.

Posted at 12:08 01 September 2009 by David Warren  |  Comments[0]