Crucial 12 days for Koizumi

http://straitstimes.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,217065,00.html?

Crucial 12 days for Koizumi
A bruising election showdown looms for the PM, who is being attacked by not just the opposition but his own party as well

By Kwan Weng Kin

TOKYO - If yesterday's heavy downpour is anything to go by, the next 12 days will be a trying period for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).


A 1,000-strong crowd of mostly women braving a downpour to hear Mr Koizumi make his campaign pitch in the western Tokyo residential suburb of Machida. -- AP


Official campaigning kicked off yesterday for the general election on Nov 9 that is not expected to be a shoo-in for Mr Koizumi, who faces sharp criticism from within and outside the party.

Mr Koizumi is using the elections to seek a fresh mandate to pursue much-needed reforms but he is openly contradicted by a sizeable number of LDP members.


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:bounce: I think what did Koizumi in was Deploying troops to Iraq
but stopped!

His new finance minister wants to put in reforms to make Japan more competitive. He was a professor at Columbia I think and he wants to get rid of the oligopolies there. However, the Japanese lawmakers are really against him because those large corporations are the backbone of the LDP.

He wants to institute free trade reforms, etc. blah blah blah..captialism.

Too liberal for the conservatives, too conservative for the liberals (moderate in all the wrong ways). Manages to alienate everyone except for the old broads who think he is "dreamy".

The Democrats are really turning it up. The merger with the Liberal Party was really a smart thing to do. They should really do the same with the Social Democratic Party (Women's Party).

Takako Doi, the current leader of the ShaMin-to (Social Democratic Party) was the leader of the former Shakai-to (Socialist Party), so she'll align her party with the Minshu-to (Democrats) anyway.

The question is, can the Democrats overcome the disproportionate representation and all the other tricks that have been used to keep the LDP in power for all but two years since 1955?

Rather than splitting the votes with another party, the new, improved Democratic Party of Japan can be more competitive in elections by attracting votes that would have gone to its closely aligned rival. However, how many of the former Jiyu-to's voters will now switch to the LDP?

And how many of the ShaMin-to's votes would go to the Communist Party if ShaMin merged with the Democrats?