Likely Japan leader: Big election win brings big responsibility

Tokyo - The conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won more seats than expected in parliamentary elections, creating a deeper obligation to the people of Japan, its leader, Shinzo Abe, said Monday.

Japan "is in a critical situation" in terms of its economy, education and the recovery of areas struck by 2011's earthquake and tsunami, said the man expected to be the next prime minister.

"We need to get out of it," he said, admitting that his party won Sunday's vote by a bigger margin than predicted.

"We, therefore, have a greater responsibility," Abe said as Japan,the world's third-largest economy, is in recession, is seeing rising tensions with China and is questioning the safety of nuclear power after last year's disaster caused meltdowns at a power plant.

The staunch nationalist who served as prime minister for a year until September 2007 was most likely to be elected premier - Japan's seventh in six years - in a special parliamentary session on December26, media reports said.

The LDP, which had suffered a huge defeat in the 2009 elections, won 294 seats Sunday in the lower chamber of the Diet, final returns showed Monday. Media reports said Abe would form a coalition government with New Komeito, which gained 31 seats.

Their two-thirds majority in the powerful 480-seat lower house of parliament enables them to override decisions made by the upper house, which is deadlocked after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost control of the chamber in 2010and no party or coalition won a majority.

The DPJ suffered a heavy defeat in Sunday's election, taking 57seats in the lower house, compared with the 230 seats it held before the election. A record eight ministers, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, lost their parliamentary seats.

Noda said Sunday that he would step down as party leader, taking responsibility for the loss.

The newly formed Japan Restoration Party, headed by former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, won 54 seats while the anti-nuclear Tomorrow Party of Japan, led by Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada, took nine seats.

Japanese stocks rose strongly Monday as exporters were bolstered by the yen's fall following the LDP's victory.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 1.28 per cent to trade at 9,862.42 as 14:14 pm (0514 GMT).

Voter turnout was 59.32 per cent, down 10 percentage points from the 2009 elections, the Kyodo News agency estimated. Such a turnout would set a new record low because it would come in below the current record, 59.65 per cent in 1996.

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