Japanese voters head to polls

Japanese voters cast their votes in nationwide parliamentary elections today which look likely to strengthen Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s grip on power and invigorate the leader’s push for economic reforms, including his long-cherished plan to privatise the nation’s postal system.

Voter turnout was high, fuelled in part by a dramatic campaign that broke new ground with the emergence of media-driven image politics and a sharper focus on policy. Reform has been the catchword of nearly all parties, even though they rarely agree on its meaning.

Koizumi, who has emerged the longest-serving prime minister in a decade since taking office in 2001, has made breaking apart and selling Japan Post’s sprawling savings and insurance businesses a centrepiece promise for his Liberal Democratic Party, while the opposition Democratic Party appealed to voters with a pension reform blueprint.

The rivals also diverge over military relations with Japan’s top ally, the US.

The campaign issues resonate with a public at a time when the country’s ageing populace sparks worries about paying for future retirees and a fragile economic comeback needs a boost by streamlining wasteful government bureaucracies.

Media polls, however, suggest voters will stick with the party they know - predicting a strong showing by the LDP for the lower house’s 480 seats.

Some surveys forecast the party – which has ruled Japan for almost all of the past 50 years – would strengthen its majority while the opposition would lose seats. But a large bloc of undecided voters still holds the outcome in limbo.

The LDP held 249 seats in the house when Koizumi dissolved the chamber on August 8. With coalition partner New Komei Party’s 34 seats, the government had a comfortable majority. The Democratic Party of Japan, the top opposition group, had 175 seats.

Koizumi, 63, planned to attend a science and technology forum in Kyoto before returning to the capital for results after polls close at 8pm (1100 GMT). An official vote count won’t be released until tomorrow morning.

Katsuya Okada, the 53-year-old leader of the rival Democrats, has urged the country to focus on other concerns than the postal service.

“I did all I could and must now await for the voters’ judgment,” Okada said after voting with his wife this morning.

“The voters’ reaction has been very good. It has never been this good before. It is a historic day for the people of Japan.”

Koizumi dissolved the lower house and called today’s snap elections when his pet project to split up and sell Japan Post’s mail, insurance and savings services was torpedoed by the upper house of parliament on August 8.

Since then the bachelor prime minister, has kept voters riveted by purging 37 anti-reform lawmakers from his party. He drafted celebrity candidates, including a TV chef and an Internet mogul, to run as “assassins” against his enemies.

Koizumi says he will try again to pass the postal reform, arguing that putting Japan Post’s massive 330 trillion yen (€2.4bn) in assets into private hands would provide for more efficient use of capital and help jump-start the economy.