Report: Japan's ruling party suffers defeat in election (Roundup)

Jul 11, 2010, 19:09 GMT

Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and its coalition partner suffered a heavy defeat in Sunday's upper house election, failing to keep their majority in the chamber, news reports said.

The DPJ and its tiny coalition partner, the People's New Party, looked certain to take fewer than 50 contested seats in the first national election since political power in the country changed hands in September. The DPJ held 54 seats before the vote.

Meanwhile, the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) gained some 50 seats and Your Party, the most popular small party, won about 10 seats, exit polls showed.

Official results are not expected until Monday.

Kan, Japan's fifth premier in three years, took office one month before the election. He told his close aides he would not resign regardless of the outcome, news reports said.

The failure to win a majority will make it more difficult for the government to carry out its policy agenda, though the DPJ has a majority in the more powerful lower house. The party is expected to seek new allies.

A total of 438 candidates competed in the election, during which half of the upper house's 242 seats were up for grabs.

The DPJ won a landslide victory in last year's lower house elections, ending more than a half-century of almost uninterrupted rule by the LDP.

Many Japanese, angry over decades of economic stagnation and eager for change, voted for the DPJ, which pledged to end wasteful spending and instead use the money to rebuild people's lives.

The momentum, however, was quickly squandered when Yukio Hatoyama, Kan's predecessor, broke an election promise on a plan to relocate a key US military base on the southern island of Okinawa.

Trust in the DPJ was further eroded when Hatoyama and party power broker Ichiro Ozawa were involved in a funding scandal.

After both men resigned in early June, Hatoyama was replaced by Kan, his former finance minister, who enjoyed approval ratings of around 60 per cent in some opinion polls.

But after Kan floated the idea of doubling the consumption tax from 5 to 10 per cent in order to rein in mounting public debt, his support rates plunged to below 50 per cent. Kan then aggravated the situation by backtracking on the proposal.

DPJ leaders told Japanese media they attributed the defeat to Kan's 'abrupt' proposal of the tax hike without much explanation.

A record 12 million people had voted in advance of Sunday's election, 11.9 per cent more than those who voted early in the 2007 election, the government said Sunday.