Shinzo Abe to be the new Japan premier

TOKYO: Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Shinzo Abe to be new premier was on course to return as prime minister of Japan after the party won an overwhelming victory in general elections, final returns showed on Monday.

Mr. Abe, 58, a staunch nationalist who served as prime minister for a year until September 2007, was most likely to be elected premier -- Japan’s seventh in six years -- in a special parliamentary session on December 26, media reports said.

The conservative LDP, which had suffered a huge defeat in the 2009 elections, won 294 seats and its ally New Komeito gained 31 seats in Sunday’s voting.

Their two-thirds majority in the powerful 480-seat lower house of parliament enables them to override a decision made by the upper house, which is deadlocked after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost control of the chamber in 2010 and no party or coalition won a majority.

The DPJ suffered a heavy defeat in Sunday’s election, taking 57 seats in the lower house, compared with the 230 seats it held before the election. A record eight ministers, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, lost their parliamentary seats.
Mr. Noda said Sunday that he would step down as party leader, taking responsibility for the loss.

The newly formed Japan Restoration Party, headed by former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, won 54 seats while the anti-nuclear Tomorrow Party of Japan, led by Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada, took nine seats.

Voter turnout was 59.32 per cent, down 10 percentage points from the 2009 elections, the Kyodo News agency estimated. Such a turnout would set a new record low because it would come in below the current record, 59.65 per cent in 1996.