Tokyo, Sep 1 (DPA) Japan’s House of Representatives is expected to elect Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), as the country’s new prime minister Sep 16, Japanese media said Tuesday.
Two days after winning a landslide victory, the opposition DPJ reached an agreement on the date for the special parliamentary session with the defeated Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Hatoyama’s DPJ trounced the LDP, which ruled Japan for all but 10 months since 1955, in Sunday’s election, winning 308 of the powerful lower house’s 480 seats. The LDP mustered only 119 seats.
Japan’s prime minister is elected by the lower house.
Despite winning an absolute majority, the DPJ plans to enter a coalition government with two other small opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party.
In a telephone poll conducted by the Kyodo news agency Monday and Tuesday, the DJP received a 41.1 percent approval rate, while 71.1 percent of Japan’s voters expressed high expectations of Hatoyama.
Hatoyama faces the daunting task of leading the world’s second-largest economy out of its worst post-war recession.
He vowed to achieve that goal by breaking the power of the bureaucracy and reducing wasteful spending.
