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Japan Democrats' Ozawa says winning majority tough

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 07:09 CDT

By Yuko Yoshikawa and Linda Sieg

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's opposition Democratic Party will have trouble achieving its goal of gaining a majority in the September 11 election, the party's No. 2 leader said on Friday after a week of dismal opinion polls, but he said it has a good chance of taking power by winning the most seats in the lower house.

Support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has risen in the nearly three weeks since Koizumi called a general election after rebels in his long-ruling party joined with the opposition to defeat bills to privatize the postal system, the core of his reform agenda.

In contrast to recent election campaigns, backing for the Democrats has slipped since the lower house was dissolved.

"If we had an election right now, we could not defeat the LDP," Ozawa, 63, told Reuters in an interview. "If we can send the people a strong signal to turn this mood around, a message that is easy to understand, then we can win."

But he added: "Our goal is to win a majority on our own. That is very difficult.

"But if we change the mood a bit, we can become the party with the biggest number of seats. At that point...I think we can secure a majority to form a government with the Democrats at the core."

Ozawa, a former LDP heavyweight, bolted the party in 1993 and helped engineer a reformist coalition that briefly took power.

Democratic Party leader Katsuya Okada has said his party aimed to win a majority and form a government on its own.

But speculation has simmered that Ozawa, known in the past for his skill at forging political deals, was eyeing a tie-up with two tiny parties formed by LDP rebels as a way for the Democrats to take power should they fall short of a majority.

Ozawa acknowledged said that the Democrats' own research compiled earlier this week has shown that the party would win only about 150 seats -- down from 175 -- in the 480-member lower house if the election had been held then.

Ozawa noted, however, that Koizumi's own goal was for his two-party coalition to win a majority, rather than for the LDP to take more than half the seats on its own.

The Asahi newspaper reported the LDP's own survey had shown that the LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, could win around 250 seats, or at least more than 240, down from a total of 283 when the lower house was dissolved on August 8.

Thirty-seven LDP lower house lawmakers voted against the postal privatization bills, and Koizumi refused to put them on the party slate.

URBAN VOTERS

"I think we have the momentum to get a majority, and I want to keep up this momentum right to the end," New Komeito leader Takenori Kanzaki told a news conference.

"About the LDP view that we can get 240 to 250 seats, I do think there is a good chance, but with an election you don't know how things will change, so to be absolutely sure of this we need to continue our efforts right to the very end," Kanzaki said.

Media coverage of Koizumi's high-profile battle with LDP rebels and his tactic of sending younger, often female candidates to fight his old guard rivals has been drowning out the Democratic Party's message that other issues such as pension reform mattered more than privatizing the postal system.

Ozawa acknowledged that the Democrats were in a tight spot in cities, where so-called "floating voters" who shun party affiliation have tended to back the opposition. "In the big cities now, the eyes of floating voters are turning a bit toward Koizumi's performance, his magic," Ozawa said. "That is even more the case because the Democrats' message is not reaching them clearly."

The Asahi reported on Thursday that only 9 percent of big-city voters who replied to the newspaper's survey on August 22-23 planned to vote for the Democratic Party, down from 17 percent in an August 15-17 poll.

Source: REUTERS

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