Tokyo, August 29: Japan is bracing itself for the most dramatic shift in its political scene of the post-war era when voters go to the polls tomorrow.
Figures released yesterday show unemployment hitting 5.7 per cent in July, the highest since records began, and, with a new deflationary spiral threatening severe damage to living standards, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has dominated Japanese politics since 1955, is expected to be swept from power by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Opinion polls predict that the centre-left DPJ is expected to win as many as 320 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives, the more powerful of the two chambers in the parliament. Japan may no longer be in recession technically but it has suffered two decades of anaemic growth and a ballooning fiscal deficit, with public debt set to hit a staggering 190 per cent of gross domestic product this year, according to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.
–Agencies