Final campaign push a day before Japanese vote

  • AP foreign,


Associated Press= TOKYO (AP) — Candidates made final impassioned appeals Saturday to voters a day before Japanese parliamentary elections that are likely to hand power back to a conservative party that ruled the country for most of the post-war era.

Polls suggest that voters will dump Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's ruling Democratic Party of Japan three years after it swept to power amid sweeping promises for change.

The DPJ's inability to deliver on a string of promises and Noda's push to double the sales tax have turned off voters, who appear to be turning back to the Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 until it lost badly to the DPJ in 2009.

If the LDP wins on Sunday, it would give the hawkish Shinzo Abe, who was prime minister from 2006-2007, the top job again, raising questions about how that might affect ties with rival China amid a territorial dispute over a cluster of tiny islands claimed by both countries.

"This isn't for the LDP. We want to restore a Japan where children are proud to have been born here. Please give us your hand," Abe, who would be Japan's seventh prime minister in 6 1/2 years, declared from the top of a van at a campaign stop in Wako, a city northwest of Tokyo.

The LDP has called for more public works spending to revive the long-stagnant economy and is generally more supportive of nuclear energy even though most Japanese want atomic energy phased out following last year's disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

Surveys this past week showed about 40 percent of people were undecided, reflecting the widespread disenchantment toward both the DPJ and the LDP, as well as confusion over the emergence of several fledgling parties that have popped up in recent months espousing a wide range of views.

The nationalistic, populist Restoration Party of Japan, led by ex-Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto — both outspoken, colorful politicians — is calling for a more assertive Japan, particularly in its dealings with China.

The anti-nuclear Tomorrow Party, formed just two weeks ago, is led by Yukiko Kada, an environmental expert and the governor of Shiga prefecture. But the party's image has taken a hit after she joined forces with a small DPJ breakaway party led by Ichiro Ozawa, a veteran power broker who has a negative reputation among many voters.

Major Japanese newspapers are projecting that the LDP will win a majority of seats in the 480-seat lower chamber of parliament, meaning it could rule alone or perhaps form a coalition with the closely allied Komeito, a party backed by a large Buddhist lay organization.

Those newspaper predictions were based on telephone polls, educated guesswork from reporters in voting districts across the country and analysis of past voting patterns. While such projections have generally been accurate in the past, some experts have cautioned that the actual results may be quite different, especially since so many are undecided.

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