Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went back to work on Monday with a powerful mandate to transform the nation’s economic and political landscape after racking up a historic election victory.
Fresh from the triumph which even many of his supporters had doubted was possible, a confident-looking Koizumi, clad in an open-neck striped shirt, waved to reporters as he entered his official residence.
The stock market rallied to a fresh four-year high in morning trade and the yen gained on expectations that Koizumi’s crushing victory in Sunday’s vote will allow him to accomplish reforms beyond privatising the post office.
As he basked in the win, which gave his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a clear majority in government for the first time in 15 years, allies called on him to stay in power beyond his self-imposed September deadline.
”I think Prime Minister Koizumi needs to meet the people’s expectations as so many people supported the Koizumi government,” Takenori Kanzaki, who heads the LDP ally New Komeito party, told reporters.
Koizumi is expected to confirm in a meeting with Kanzaki that the LDP would maintain its coalition with New Komeito, a Buddhist-oriented pacifist party, even though it can now easily survive without its support.
The 63-year-old premier, running a campaign of colourful candidates who backed his signature plan of privatising Japan Post, sealed a record majority in Parliament with the power to push through any Bill.
The LDP, which has ruled Japan for all but 10 months since 1955, won 296 seats in the 480-member lower House of Representatives, up from the 212 seats the LDP was defending after Koizumi expelled dissenters to postal reforms and called the early election two years ahead of schedule.
Combined with the 31 seats garnered by New Komeito, the coalition will control 327 seats, or a post-World War II record of 68,1%.
By securing two-thirds of the all-important chamber, the coalition could push Bills through Parliament despite opposition in the upper house, where the coalition has a slim majority.
It was the upper house, which cannot be dissolved, that rejected the postal reforms. Some LDP dissenters in the upper house have already said they will change their stance in light of Koizumi’s mandate.
”There is such great trust in the new LDP and Koizumi’s reform team. This really gives us a feeling of grave responsibility,” LDP secretary general Tsutomu Takebe told reporters.
He said Parliament would convene as soon as possible and enact postal reforms. Jiji Press, quoting an anonymous ruling-party lawmaker, said the lower house would convene September 21 to formally re-elect Koizumi as prime minister.
Koizumi had described breaking up the Japan Post, which is effectively the world’s biggest financial institution with $3-billion in savings and insurance assets, as a litmus test for political and economic reform.
The huge margin of victory was expected to give him leeway to push through other reforms as well.
”Voters effectively put blind trust in him in issues other than just postal privatization,” said Sadahumi Kawato, a politics specialist at Tohoku University.
But the Asahi Shimbun, an influential liberal daily, warned Koizumi not to let the massive victory go to his head, noting that his campaign was focused on the post.
”It is wrong to believe the landslide victory gave a vote of confidence on Koizumi politics,” the Asahi said.
The paper recalled that Koizumi still faced tensions with giant neighbour China over his annual pilgrimage to a controversial war shrine, as well as public opposition to his deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq.
Katsuya Okada resigned as head of the main opposition Democratic Party after it lost more than one-third of its seats, despite offering its own set of economic reforms.
”Japan cannot change with the current LDP. There must come the time when people need the Democratic Party,” Okada said. – AFP
