The landslide election victory for Japan’s conservative opposition marked a “harsh verdict” by disgruntled voters on the ousted Democratic Party of Japan, media said Monday.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) win in Sunday’s polls gave its leader and one-time premier Shinzo Abe a chance to push his hawkish security agenda and reflate the world’s third-largest economy, but it was “a landslide victory without zeal”, the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said in an editorial.
“Voters handed down a harsh verdict on the government of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ),” the mass-circulation daily said.
Voters dumped Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda three years after his DPJ promised a change from more than half a century of almost unbroken rule by the conservative LDP.
However, analysts say the victory came by default, with voters disenchanted by the DPJ after three years of flip-flops, policy missteps and diplomatic drift, but having little faith in any of the alternatives.
The influential Mainichi Shimbun said Sunday’s result “shows a public sentiment that wants steady policy management”.
“Shinzo Abe, who will become the next prime minister, should humbly accept ‘the landslide without fanfare’,” it said.
Japan’s electorate punished the DPJ for its poor handling of a controversial US military base relocation in Okinawa that hurt ties with Washington.
It was also criticised for its slow and sometimes confused post-disaster management after last year’s quake-tsunami disaster and subsequent nuclear crisis at Fukushima, the worst atomic accident in a generation.
The leading Nikkei business daily warned against the LDP becoming too confident in its lacklustre win.
If the LDP “fails to make change, voters will give a strict verdict again next time”, it said.
Together with New Komeito, its junior coalition partner, the LDP is expected to have a two-thirds majority of the powerful 480-seat lower house, enough to override the upper house in which no party has overall control.
But with poor voter turnout and complaints that the LDP was the least-worst option, even Abe acknowledged the result was no ringing endorsement.
“This doesn’t mean confidence in the LDP has been fully restored,” he said Sunday.
“I think this result means a ‘no’ to the political confusion of the DPJ. People will be carefully watching to see if the LDP can live up to expectations.”
The 58-year-old Abe, whose first stint as premier in 2006-7 ended ignominiously, has vowed to rectify the listless economy after years of deflation, made worse by a soaring currency that has squeezed exporters.
He also offered to boost spending on infrastructure at a time when much of the tsunami-wrecked northeast remains a shell of its former self.
On security, Abe pledged to bolster Japan’s defences and stand up to China in a dispute over the sovereignty of a small chain of islands in the East China Sea.
Japan vote 'harsh verdict' on ousted ruling party: media
