Not here in the US, but over on the right side of the International Dateline. In Japan they will be having elections for the lower house today. Its not looking good for the home team of LDP. The odds are pretty good that they will go down to a crushing defeat. Stippy has a good detailed election round up:
The LDP won the last lower house election (2005) after Koizumi dissolved parliament to win support for his key policy of privatizing the post office. Voter turnout was huge (for Japan) and the LDP won 296 out of the 480 seats in the lower house. (327 including Komeito) The Democrats didn’t even win a quarter of the seats (113/480).
This time around the tide has changed and the Democrats will be focusing on two magic numbers. The first is 241 seats, enough for a simple majority of the lower house. The second is 373 seats. 373 seats would mean that combined with their 109 current seats in the upper house, the Democrats would have 2/3 of all votes in a combined sitting of parliament. In otherwords, they no longer need to worry about cooperating with any of the quacky minority parties who hold the casting vote in the upper house at the moment. If the upper house knocks back any of their legislation they can just have a combined sitting of the two houses and force any legislation that they like through. (The LDP+Komeito coalition have 103/242 seats in the Upper house. The Commies have 7/242, The Socialists have 5/242 and The People’s New Party have 4/242.)
The current incumbent Prime Minister has not done much to help the LDP cause-he is extremely unpopular. Not suprising when you run a commerical like this:
The commercial starts your life, your country-is with Aso. Truly protect Japan. Ji Minto (LDP).
A lot of LDP politicans who are trying to hold on to their diet seats have deliberately avoided placing Aso on their campaign posters. Why would they want their national TV ad campaign to put the focus on an uncharismatic and unpopular leader? It’s almost as if they are trying to increase the scale of the defeat.
And when it comes-it will bring some changes to the Japan / US security relationship. There won’t be anything drastic-but it will create headaches for US Forces in Japan. For one thing, the odds are pretty good that DPJ will reduce the amount of money Japan contributes to maintaining US forces in Japan and for construction of new facilities. The US has long relied on this money to avoid making hard decisions of its own about facilities-JFIP money is the crack cocaine of the Japan based military construction program. The US will also have to retrench on the number of Japanese Master Labor Contract workers it gets-another freebie that masks the true costs of maintaining 40,000 plus troop in Japan.
Which could not come at worse time-as the US will be knee deep in some of the boneheaded moves it agreed to back in 2005: moving CVW-5 from Atsugi to Iwakuni, moving USMC fixed wing aircraft from Okinawa up to Honshu, and the relocation of 8000 Marines to Guam. Japan was stuck with a bill for that last item that is over 6 Billion yen. Suffice it to say they are not happy about it. However that’s an agreement between the US and the Japanese government and I think they will be forced to abide by it.
Which is why I think they will cut the yearly cost sharing money and construction money.
A second issue will continuation of the JMSDF refueling mission in the Persian Gulf. DPJ has been on both sides of the issue, being initially against it then coming out in support. A lot of that opposition had to do with presence of Japanese forces in Iraq-so with them now being out of Iraq, it will be interesting what will transpire. It will be interesting to see what they do about this.
A third issue will be the construction of a replacement facility for Futenma MCAS in Okinawa. Right now they are supposed to build one on the north part of the island. DPJ will not allow a Futenma replacement facility on Okinawa. (Somewhere else in Japan? Possible… But not Okinawa…) That means the US will leave Futenma, move the Marine helicopters to Kadena, but refuse to pay for the huge environmental
clean up costs involving closing Futenma. That ought to be fun to watch.
Finally, there will be opposition to basing new types of assets on the Kanto plain. The nuclear carrier issue has been solved thankfully, but as Japan develops its capabilities for areas like ballistic missile defense-there will be more push back on anything that appears to be an expansion of US footprint. Again, another interesting thing to watch.
You can probably expect big publicity whenever something bad happens with a Sailor or Marine-but don’t expect any changes to the Status of Forces agreement. It would just get too hard for both sides.