Japan's centre-left opposition Democratic party won a crushing landslide victory over the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democrats yesterday, redrawing the political landscape of the world's second largest economy.
The result – the first time since the LDP's founding in 1955 that any other party has won an electoral majority in the Diet's lower house – gave the DPJ a mandate to pursue its campaign policies of taming the nation's powerful bureaucrats and rolling out generous child allowances and welfare payments.
“The Japanese people have for the first time bravely selected a new government, and I would like to thank them for that,” said Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ president and Japan's prime minister presumptive. “We humbly accept their mandate.”