CHIBA -- With just six weeks until the March 25 gubernatorial election here, the main political parties in this traditionally conservative prefecture have been uncharacteristically slow in selecting candidates.
This farcical situation in what would otherwise be a low-profile local election is largely due to the incapacity of parties to fathom voter sentiment.
They seem haunted by the specter of last year's Nagano and Tochigi gubernatorial elections, both of which saw the one candidate jointly fielded by the major parties defeated by an independent candidate.