Tokyo, September 16: Japan’s new centre-left government is due to take power Wednesday in a fresh start for Asia’s top economy, which has been under conservative rule for almost all of the post-war era.
Yukio Hatoyama, head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), was to be voted in as prime minister two and a half weeks after his party’s stunning election victory changed the country’s political landscape.
Japan’s usually risk-averse voters, tired with a stagnant political system and years of economic malaise, took a chance on Hatoyama’s untested DPJ when they threw out the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on August 30.
“It will be the start of a new era,” Hidekazu Kawai, political science professor emeritus of Gakushuin University, told reporters.
Hatoyama, a US-trained engineering scholar and scion of a political dynasty, has promised to make politics work for the people and to undo an “iron triangle” that existed between the LDP, big business and the state bureaucracy.
He has promised sweeping change on many fronts, from boosting social welfare without raising taxes, to cutting greenhouse emissions and redefining Japan’s place in the world by seeking closer ties with its Asian neighbourhood.
The start of his government “will be the dawn of Japan’s new politics,” Hatoyama told DPJ members on the eve of taking power.
–Agencies