Editorial

Apart from an 11-month break, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan has been in power for 55 years since 1955. Last Sunday, it was swept out of power by Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Forecasts indicate a huge shift away from Taro Aso's LDP. Indeed, the final results may show the DPJ with a majority of about 200 seats in the lower house, almost tripling the party's strength in the 480-member Chamber.

Elections to the less powerful upper house, where the DPJ holds a majority, are due next year. Unless Mr Hatoyama makes a mess of things in the next few months, there seems to be no reason why that majority should not hold, unless, of course, a savvy Japanese electorate is keen to balance the new government's power.

As with so many politicians returned to power, or appointed to positions of leadership, the new Prime Minister was reported as saying: "We will not be arrogant and we will listen to the people (who) are angry with politics and the ruling coalition".

The DPJ, he said, had reached the starting line. "This is by no means the destination. At long last we are able to move politics, to create a new kind of politics that will fulfil the expectations of the people."

Mr Hatoyama inherits a country with the second largest economy in the world but one that is in recession. His two main tasks are to turn the economy round and deal with an unemployment level that is the highest it has ever been. His intention to extend help to consumers and workers rather than corporations may, apart from the social benefit angle that this promises, give a fillip to consumer spending. But Mr Hatoyama has other measures in mind that may blow up in his face. One of these is an audacious plan to introduce a child benefit that, set at an annual $3,000 until age 15, is a massive spend. He has promised not to increase consumption tax for the next four years and to lower fuel tax, making it difficult to see where he hopes to get the money for his child benefit project. The answer he held out was that money would come from cutting down on waste and the civil service. This will not be enough.

Certainly this is a bold move, one that will excite the attention of electorates all over the world. Still, its sheer magnitude leads one to conclude that the DPJ will stand or fall depending on how well it manages to carry it out.

On matters of foreign policy, the world must sit and wait but not for long. Although Washington was quick to hail the new government's victory as "historic" and expressed its confidence in a "close" and "flourish(ing)" partnership, Mr Hatoyama has indicated he will not be following blindly in the footsteps of the LDP. He will not, he said, act in any other way but tough in his country's relations with North Korea but intends to revisit the emotional issue of American bases in Japan.

On both the domestic and foreign fronts, it is clear that Mr Hatoyama's programme will demand strong leadership if he is to deliver what he has promised. He must be hoping that the LDP will take so long licking its wounds it will offer no meaningful opposition. The devil, however, remains firmly ensconced in the scale of his spending programme in a country where a third of the population will soon be pensioners.