Opposition's pain, LDP's gain

Regarding the Dec. 14 article "Abe tightens grip on power as ruling coalition wins 325 seats in Lower House election": Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the main and possibly only beneficiary of this exercise in expensive futility. He can spend Christmas and New Year's knowing that he has already spent his pricey o-toshidama (New Year's gift) on himself and his election in order to control the public purse for years to come.

There was no choice in this "democratic" process, because a squabbling opposition had nothing left to offer, and an apathetic populace nothing more to hope for. Giving the Japanese people no choice is how the Liberal Democratic Party entrenches itself, with only token gestures of service to the public. The LDP didn't win by default — but rather by its own design. It's been more than half a century in the making.

As nearly half of the electorate didn't even turn up at the polls, Abe's victory has been merely to defeat public hope. Japan's future is just as murky now as it was before the snap election was called a few weeks ago. Most Japanese are just glad that the incessant blaring through loudspeakers of the names of candidates with the biggest budgets has stopped.

The ruling party had twice as many candidates as its nearest opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan, with more than twice the budget for preserving its hold on government. The opposition was denied the time required to organize itself for any election, let alone one affecting the nation's future.

And the LDP relied on the opposition's cataclysmically bad luck of being in power in March 2011, when a tsunami struck a nuclear power plant that the LDP had allowed to be set up with little concern for public safety.

The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.