Japan election: Government wins new term with big majority

Japan’s right-wing government has won a two-thirds majority victory in a snap general election that swept aside the largely unprepared and divided opposition.

The final turnout was a record low of 52.4 per cent, according to forecasts – well down on the record postwar low of 59.3 per cent in 2012.

Media reports said the coalition government had two-thirds of the seats in Japan's lower house– 325 seats out of 475 – giving prime minister Shinzo Abe a rebuilt platform to unleash a raft of controversial policies.

Mr Abe called the election three weeks ago after Japan unexpectedly dipped into recession, billing it as a referendum on his inflationary economic policies.

Dubbed “Abenomics”, the policies have turbo-charged the stock market and stoked the profits of Japan’s biggest companies but left most of the rest of the country untouched.

The government says rising prices after years of deflation show the virtuous cycle of economic growth has begun. It campaigned on the slogan: “There is no other way to economic recovery.”

Much of the government’s programme for economic revival so far has consisted of a strategy of printing money, with little sign of promised structural reforms. Wages have failed to keep pace with rising prices, sparking criticism that Mr Abe’s policies mainly favour the rich.

A poll last week in the pro-business Nikkei newspaper showed more than half of voters disapproved of Abenomics. But most also express little enthusiasm for the political alternatives, led by the shambolic Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

“Abe’s expected victory is the result of the self-destruction of the opposition,” political scientist Shinichi Nishikawa told AFP.

Once back in office, Mr Abe has pledged to hike Japan's consumption tax, lower corporate taxes and push through a gridlocked Asia-Pacific regional trade deal with the United States. He also wants to restart Japan's nuclear reactors, which are offline following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Three arrows

Mr Abe told voters he needed more time to fire his three policy “arrows” of monetary easing, fiscal spending and structural reform, which he pledged will pull Japan back from its long-term economic decline.

But critics worried that a runaway victory for the government would convince Mr Abe to return to his nationalist political obsessions, worsening already badly frayed ties with South Korea and Japan's giant neighbour China.

The prime minister is aligned with a large group of politicians that wants to roll back much of the accepted narrative of the second World War and water down Japan’s long-standing pacifism.

An overwhelming majority would have allowed Mr Abe to propose a national referendum on Japan’s pacifist constitution.

His Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has long supported such a referendum but Komeito, the government’s Buddhist-backed coalition partner, has dragged its feet.

Public broadcaster NHK said the LDP had won 290 seats, with Komeito taking 35. LDP held 295 seats before the poll.