Our Man in Abiko: Japan Election: The Morning After

Our Man in Abiko brings an easy to digest, and corrected, report on Japan's election below. Before you get to Our Man in Abiko, here is an interesting tidbit on Yukio Hatoyama and the DPJ: "

"Hatoyama, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University near Palo Alto, California, pledges to end the government’s reliance on an unelected bureaucracy, which he says hasn’t worked in the public interest. Pre-election polls showed support for his plans to unify the fragmented pension system and increase the number of doctors.

The DPJ is a mix of former LDP lawmakers, ex-socialists, one-time bureaucrats and trade unionists. It is a “broad church” whose competing constituents have made policy priorities difficult to identify, according to Jonathan Allum, a strategist with KBC Financial Products in London." Click here for more on this story.

 

Our Man wants to set the record straight(ish), in the heat of the Election Night, he got some of his numbers wrong. here are the correct ones, for those who care about such things:

• Democratic Party of Japan (good guys) 308
• Liberal Democratic Party (bad guys) 119
• New Komeito (bad guys Lite) 21
• Commies: 9
• SDP: 7
• People's New Party: 3
• New Party Nippon: 1
• Japan Renaissance Party (no, really): 0
• Your Party: 5
• Small Parties(?? That's what it says at Kyodo, sorry): 1
• Independents: 6

Oh, turnout 69 percent, up a little on 2005. Click here to read more on the election.For a short and dirty explanation on the above, check out Janne in Osaka.[ad#468x60-ad]