Next Indian Elections

(11 Sep 2005)

1. Polling station official ringing a bell to announce the opening of the polling station at the Tsukudajima Elementary School
2. People queuing up and entering the station
3. Various of people receiving the voting document
4. Wide of people marking the voting slip
5. Various of people voting
6. SOUNDBITE (Japanese) Vox pop:
"I think Japan needs reform to adjust to the change. The question is how we do it. I voted for a party with such hope for reform."
7. SOUNDBITE (Japanese) Vox pop:
"In this election, I thought about the last election and the next election. Thinking of how Japan, as a nation, from its past up to now should be, I voted thinking this election will serve as a passing point to move towards the future."
8. Wide pan of people voting

STORYLINE:

Polling stations opened across Japan on Sunday for nationwide parliamentary elections likely to strengthen Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's grip on power and hand him a mandate to push through such long-promised reforms as the privatisation of the nation's postal system.

Turnout was expected to be high, fuelled in part by a dramatic campaign that broke new ground with the emergence of media-driven image politics and a sharper focus on policy. Reform has been the catchword of nearly all parties, even though they rarely agree on its meaning.

Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has made his plan to break apart and sell Japan Post's sprawling savings and insurance businesses its
centrepiece promise, while the main opposition Democratic Party has appeal to voters with a blueprint to reform the pension system.

Both issues resonate with a public at a time when the country's aging populace sparks worries about paying for future retirees and a fragile
economic comeback needs a boost by streamlining wasteful government bureaucracies.

"I think Japan needs reform to adjust to the change. The question is how we do it. I voted for a party with such hope for reform," said one voter who cast his ballot at the Tsukudajima Elementary School in Tokyo on Sunday.

Media polls, suggest voters will stick with the party they know - predicting a strong showing by the LDP for the lower house's 480 seats.

Some surveys forecast the party - which has ruled Japan for almost all of the past 50 years - would strengthen its majority while the opposition would lose seats. But a large bloc of undecided voters still holds the outcome in limbo.

The LDP held 249 seats in the house when Koizumi dissolved the chamber on Aug. 8.

With coalition partner New Komei Party's 34 seats, the government had a comfortable majority. The Democratic Party of Japan, the top opposition group, had 175 seats.

Koizumi's main rival, Katsuya Okada, the leader of Democrats, has urged the country to focus on other concerns than the postal service.

Aside from pushing pension reform, the Democrats oppose the Japan's dispatch of troops to Iraq and criticise Koizumi's controversial visits to a
Tokyo war shrine, which enrage neighbouring Asian countries that say the site glorifies Japan's militaristic past.

Koizumi dissolved the lower house and called Sunday's snap elections when his pet project to split up and sell Japan Post's mail, insurance and savings services was torpedoed by the upper house of parliament on Aug. 8.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives ​​
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/

You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/d4463afa0db5e0aaaa8564f6ba672440