TOKYO: Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda dissolved the lower house of
parliament Friday for an election next month, in a political gamble widely
expected to strip his centre-left party of power.
Japan's sixth new prime minister
since 2006 set the revolving door of premiership spinning against resistance
from his fragmenting party, but after having stared down his opponents over
crucial legislation.
"I want to seek a mandate
from the people," Noda told reporters in the morning as he arrived at the
prime minister's office ahead of a cabinet meeting.
The dissolution itself was a
brief affair, with the lower house speaker reading a short promulgation
prepared by the premier and endorsed by Emperor Akihito, the constitutional
head of state.
An extraordinary meeting of the
cabinet was to be held later Friday, at which December 16 is expected to be
formally announced as election day.
Noda has been under pressure to
call elections for months and offered dissolution of the main decision-making
chamber in a parliamentary debate earlier this week.
He managed along the way to
secure a number of concessions from his opponents -- key among them an
agreement on a deficit-financing bill allowing the government to issue bonds to
cover its debts this financial year, without which Japan would have effectively
run out of money at the end of this month.
That bill passed the
opposition-controlled upper house on Friday morning.
Noda's own ill-disciplined
Democratic Party of Japan is anything but united on the need for an election on
December 16.
Poor poll numbers, voter
disillusionment, increasing tensions with China, the slow pace of recovery from
the tsunami of March 2011 and a plodding economy mean many in the DPJ fear for
their seats.
Since Wednesday's debate the
number of parliamentarians jumping ship has accelerated. Having had almost
two-thirds of the 480 lower house seats when they came to power in 2009, the
party had lost its majority by Friday morning.
Chief government spokesman Osamu
Fujimura defended the DPJ's track record, saying ties with the United States
had been strengthened over the last three years. He insisted efforts had been
made to recover from tsunami.
"In addition, the bill to
reform social welfare and the tax system was passed by parliament," he
said, referring to Noda's flagship and hard-fought legislation that will double
sales tax to help tame Japan's ballooning deficit.
Commentators say no single party
will have the numbers to govern alone after the election, with an untidy
coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and smaller fringe parties seen as a
likely outcome.
Octogenarian former Tokyo
Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who established his Party of the Sun this week, met
Friday with iconoclastic Osaka mayor, Toru Hashimoto, the leader of the
recently-launched Japan Restoration Party.
Kyodo News cited sources close to
Hashimoto's party saying the pair would meet again to thrash out a deal on
Saturday as they look to narrow their policy differences and forge a
"third pole" between the two largest parties.
"The focus will be on how
many seats the third force, led by Hashimoto, will gain. They may have a
balance of power, depending upon election results," said Koji Nakakita,
professor of politics at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.
He added that the LDP may seek to
shore up its alliance with New Komeito, a centrist Buddhist grouping.
Financial markets have begun
preparing for an LDP-led government with the yen softening markedly after
leader Shinzo Abe called for "unlimited easing" by the Bank of Japan.
- CNA/jc
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