Japan prime minister Taro Aso resigned as head of the Liberal Democratic Party after presiding over a landslide election defeat that ended his party’s almost unbroken half-century grip on power.
The LDP yesterday lost two-thirds of its politicians in the lower house of parliament after failing to convince voters it could tackle Japan’s economic stagnation and spiraling welfare costs.
The Democratic Party of Japan captured 308 of 480 seats in a complete reversal of the last election, in 2005.
“I very much regret that so many of my comrades lost, Mr Aso (68) said today in a national televised press conference in Tokyo. “I’d like to resign as LDP president.”
He previously indicated his intentions last night as election results came in. Aso never overcame the LDP’s sagging popularity after taking office in September 2008 as the party’s fourth premier in three years.
His 25 trillion yen (€188 billion) economic stimulus plan failed to impress voters, as the nation faced its deepest recession since World War II.
Mr Aso ranked as Japan’ss worst postwar leader in a February survey of 2,000 people published by the Weekly Bunshun magazine. His approval rating dropped to 9.7 per cent in a Nippon Television news poll the same month, the second lowest ever for a prime minister, a record set by Yoshiro Mori in 2001.
The DPJ, led by Yukio Hatoyama (62) swept to power on campaign promises to boost child-care spending, cut taxes and curtail the power of the country’s bureaucrats. The party also promised to reduce what it called wasteful spending on infrastructure projects that became a mainstay of the LDP’s efforts to tackle economic woes.
The LDP, formed in 1955, has held power for all but 10 months in 1993, when it lost control of the government to a coalition of opposition parties.
Under the LDP, Japan rose from a country struggling to feed its people after the war to the world’s second-largest economy. Previous Popularity The LDP’s popularity surged before the last election under Junichiro Koizumi, known for his long silver hair and love of Elvis Presley.
Mr Koizumi, who promised to destroy the party in order to save it, called a snap election in 2005 when members of the LDP refused to back his bid to privatize the postal service. The result was a landslide victory. Since then the LDP has suffered from scandals including lost pension records at a time when the public was becoming increasingly concerned about welfare and health care.
There have been more deaths than births in Japan in three out of the last four years. Japan’s economy grew an annualized 3.7 per cent in the three months ended June 30th, the first growth in five quarters, after an 11.7 per cent decline in the first quarter of the year. The jobless rate rose to a record 5.7 per cent in July and the national debt is approaching 200 per cent of gross domestic product, the highest in the world.
Mr Aso took office in September after the resignation of his predecessor, Yasuo Fukuda. He defeated four other candidates in an internal election to head the party and become premier.
Bloomberg