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Curzon
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Curzon

Date

September 12th, 2005

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Misunderestimated

“If the Lower House is dissolved, we will take it as the chance of a lifetime, and say ‘thank-you’.”
Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Tatsuo Kawabata, 7 August 2005
(The Democrats lost about a third of their seats, dropping from 171 to 113, in yesterday’s election. Kawabata also lost his directly elected seat, although he remains in the house through the proportional representation system.)

“Koizumi commits political suicide”
J Sean Curtin – Asia Times, 9 August 2005
(Koizumi’s party won a record-high percentage of the Diet seats in yesterday’s election.)

Comments to this entry

Grendel
September 13, 2005
3:32 pm
The media said the same when Schröder asked president Köhler to dissolve the Bundestag, and this weekends elections are not as clear-cut as the CDU would like them to be... let's hope whoever wins gets a clear mandate.
Curzon
September 14, 2005
3:34 pm
The LDP even "misunderestimated their own power:":http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20050914TDY04002.htm

The LDP even won one more seat in Tokyo under the proportional representation system than the number of candidates it fielded. As a result, the party's seat was apportioned to the Social Democratic Party instead.


Yikes!

And this:

In the southern Kanto region bloc, an administrative worker at LDP headquarters who was fielded as a candidate to complete the list of candidates also secured election.