To me, the results of the July 29 Upper House elections were a clear signal that the Japanese people were fed up not only with Shinzo Abe as prime minister but also with the governing Liberal Democratic Party and its policies as a whole.
When Abe resigned last month, he basically acknowledged that his administration and the LDP were no longer enjoying the support of the people. Therefore, Abe's resignation should have, in my opinion, automatically voided the LDP status as the majority party in the Lower House.
How can the LDP claim to represent the wishes of the people of Japan when its administration (in Abe's final days) could muster only a 20 percent approval rate?
I expected an automatic dissolution of the Lower House and new elections to determine which party really had the majority. If that had been done, I suspect that Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa would be prime minister today. Instead, the LDP got to put a new guy at the helm -- in other words, more of the same.
The biggest losers are the people of Japan who did not get the chance to voice their opinion, through general elections, on who should be the leader of their country. Instead, the members of the Lower House, which ceased to be meaningful representatives a long time ago, were allowed to decide for them.
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