Japan's Koizumi rules out general
election despite Tokyo poll victory
TOKYO, June 25 (AFP) -
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said
Monday his party's Tokyo assembly ballot victory had
not tempted him to cash in on his enormous popularity
and call a general election in July.
"As I have been saying, there will be no double
election," for both houses of parliament, Koizumi told
reporters a day after his Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) won in its first electoral test since the premier
took office in April.
The ruling LDP, which fielded 55 candidates, won 53
seats in the election for the Tokyo metropolitan
assembly, up from the 48 it held before.
The LDP secured a majority in the 127-member
assembly together with the Buddhist-backed New
Komeito party, a key coalition partner of the Koizumi
administration, which won 23 seats, unchanged from its
previous number.
The Tokyo win raised speculation that Koizumi would
dissolve the House of Representatives and call
lower-house elections to coincide with the scheduled
upper-house ballot set for July 29.
The weekend vote in Tokyo was widely seen as an
indicator of national voting intentions in that national
election.
Koizumi said that in the local election he had achieved
his aim to "break the established theory that the LDP is
weak in urban areas."
"I hope to relay this to the upper-house election," he
said.
Political analyst Harumi Arima said "there is no way
there will be double elections as the LDP is not going to
lose the upper-house elections" if the current situation
continues.
"The LDP old guard is going to bully Mr Koizumi (to
wreck his reform plans), and he needs to hold onto his
trumps to play when faced with an impasse," he said.
"He is the type of the man who goes ahead with pressing
people to answer what they want -- Koizumi or the old
LDP -- when he is cornered," Arima said.
From a practical point of view, the candidates for
lower-house seats "have not saved enough money to
fight another election" since the last general election in
June 2000, he added.
Shigenori Okazaki, a political analyst at UBS Warburg,
said the Tokyo election "ended in a not-so-dramatic
victory for the coalition; we may see a replay at the
upper-house election."
"If history repeats itself, the upper house election should
also end in a so-so victory for the coalition since in the
past, the results of Tokyo elections were closely
reflected in following national elections."
"If this pattern holds, the upper-house election set for
July 29 could also be anticlimactic," he said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda forecast the
LDP would increase its strength in the House of
Councillors, even if not dramatically so.
"The LDP must win as close as possible to a majority of
seats ... Such a possibility has moved a little nearer," Jiji
Press news agency quoted Fukuda as saying in the
central Japanese city of Takasaki.
The LDP lacks a majority in the upper house, holding
114 seats out of the total of 252. The ruling coalition has
143 seats, counting the 24 seats held by New Komeito
and five by the LDP's, smallest ally Conservative Party.