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Japanese voters deserve clear policies
(Asianewnet.net)
Updated: 2009-08-19 11:37

Official campaigning for the House of Representatives election kicked off Tuesday. This is an extremely important contest, the outcome of which will steer the future course of the nation.

We hope that each voter, political party and candidate will carry an awareness of the significance of this election and fulfill their respective responsibilities in it.

The nation faces a number of difficult and serious problems. The world economy appears to be emerging from the business downturn that struck the globe at the same time, but has yet to reach full-fledged recovery.

How to put the nation's economy on a recovery path while taking into consideration the worsening employment situation is a pressing problem. With the declining birthrate combined with the aging of the population, the assumption of a social security system supported by a steadily growing economy no longer holds water.

It is necessary to work on a new mechanism that addresses benefits and burdens and to reconstruct a sustainable system to realize it. The security environment surrounding the nation has grown more severe.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is accelerating its nuclear and ballistic missile development. How can the nation's peace and security be ensured? Appropriate ways to solve these pressing issues should be a key point of contention in the election.

Priorities of the two coalitions

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Each political party and candidate needs to present fresh visions for the nation and the policies needed to realize them so that voters can have clear choices.

Both the ruling and opposition parties are presenting their ideas of a government with the notion that they will be establishing ruling coalitions.

A good way to see which policies a future government would give priority to is to look at the common policies of the current ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, and the common policies of three opposition parties -- the Democratic Party of Japan, the Social Democratic Party and People's New Party.

As their growth strategy, the ruling parties have pledged in their common campaign platform to create domestic demand worth 40 trillion yen to 60 trillion yen and secure 2 million jobs over the next three years.

They specify that they will implement drastic tax reforms--including raising the consumption tax rate once the economy recovers--to ensure a stable financial resource for social security programs.

Though the pledge carries the responsible attitude of a ruling party toward tackling economic recovery and financial reconstruction in two stages, the presentation's concrete measures to realize these policies have not been made clear.

The two parties need to provide a more understandable explanation of this to voters. The three opposition parties tout as their top policy priority the support of household budget concerns, such as directly providing child-rearing allowances and free high school education.

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