Elections

Well, Monday finds us with relatively the same Japanese government. Yesterday was election day for the Japanese parliament. I don’t pretend to understand the processes of Japanese government, but suffice to say, its pretty similar to what they had 4 years ago. Japan’s Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi (who looked a lot like Richard Gear 4 years ago) decided to hold a surprise election and dissolve parliament after facing many suppositions that he wasn’t living up to his promises of change. Well, that apparently set him off. He fired the entire parliament and held elections. Surprisingly, this is exactly what the public wanted and rallied giving a landslide victory to Koizumi giving him 296 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament. That roughly works out to a 61% approval rating for him and the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party).

After asking around a little bit, I found out that people were a bit disappointed with the outcome. Koizumi apparently has a mind geared towards war and the changing of the constitution that was set up after WWII. Also, now that his approval is reaffirmed he will begin the privatization of the postal system. There are some pros and cons to this from what I have heard. One pro is that it will reduce the amount of government in people’s lives (a goal that Koizumi is constantly striving for). The cons, however, are many. Privatization of the postal system means privatization of the bank accounts linked to the postal system (my account is through the post office). I would also cancel the government-backed insurance of one’s account. Up until now, if someone were to steal money from the Post Office, the clients money would be reimbursed. After privatization, this would not be the case. In fact, many lost their entire life savings in the 90’s when Japans economic bubble burst and private banks started going under. Another con would be the problem of “unprofitable” rural routes. If you are trying to make money at a business, why would you even set up mail boxes, office, etc. at anyplace where you would get a low traffic volume?

Things have been fairly good in Japan for the last 4 years, so we'll see if things end up ok. Perhaps that's naïve of me, but I really don’t have a choice. After all I can’t vote like in the States.


Bush on the left, Koizumi on the right. This can't be good...