{"id":125785,"date":"2017-10-23T02:07:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T06:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=125785"},"modified":"2017-10-23T02:07:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T06:07:30","slug":"japans-ruling-camp-wins-two-thirds-majority-in-lower-house-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/10\/23\/japans-ruling-camp-wins-two-thirds-majority-in-lower-house-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s ruling camp wins two-thirds majority in lower house election"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Logo<\/a>
Logo for Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) (Photo by Source, Fair use<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TOKYO \u2014<\/strong>\u00a0Japan’s ruling camp grouped by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner, the Komeito Party, has won a two-thirds “super majority” in Sunday’s lower house election, according to vote counting results reported by public broadcaster NHK.<\/p>\n

As of 01:50 a.m. local time on Monday (1650 GMT Sunday), the LDP has secured 283 seats of the 465-seat lower house of parliament and the Komeito Party has won 29 seats, while there were still 10 seats undecided with vote counting still going on, according to NHK.<\/p>\n

The ruling camp taking two-thirds majority in lower house would pave the way for the prime minister to realize his long-term ambition of revising the postwar pacifist constitution, local analysts said.<\/p>\n

“I want to accept this victory with humility,” Abe told a television program after the election on Sunday.<\/p>\n

He added that he expects “discussions on revising the constitution to deepen” in the parliament in an attempt to seek more support from various forces on the issue.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the “reform conservative” Party of Hope led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) are vying for the largest opposition.<\/p>\n

The Party of Hope, while sharing the LDP’s conservative views on constitutional change and security laws, has been against consumption tax hike and criticized Abe’s economic policies dubbed Abenomics.<\/p>\n

The CDPJ, set up only about a couple of weeks ago by the collapsing Democratic Party’s\u00a0liberal wing, was quick to rise after voters’ initial enthusiasm for the Party of Hope ebbed.<\/p>\n

Yoshihiko Noda, former prime minister, said that the opposition forces should have been able to win more seats with support rating for Abe’s cabinet dropping amid scandals, but the splitting-up of the opposition benefited the ruling camp.<\/p>\n

Voter turnout was expected to be around 53.60 percent, slightly higher than the record low of 52.66 percent for the previous lower house election in 2014, according to a NHK projection.<\/p>\n

A powerful typhoon approaching the Japanese archipelago, bringing rain and strong winds and disrupting traffic, was expected to weigh on the turnout, but a record high of 21 million people, or around 20.1 percent of the eligible population, have cast their ballots early.<\/p>\n

Due to the typhoon, regional election boards of some municipalities have announced that ballots counting in those areas could be delayed to Monday.\u00a0(Xinhua)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOKYO \u2014\u00a0Japan’s ruling camp grouped by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner, the Komeito …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":125787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[29097,28988,13509],"class_list":["post-125785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-komeito-party","tag-liberal-democratic-party-ldp","tag-prime-minister-shinzo-abe","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}