NIPON PM 'to quit over poll defeat'

Taro Aso, Japan's prime minister, has said he will step down in the wake of his party's apparent defeat in the country's elections.

Aso said on Sunday that he had to "take the responsibility" following what exit polls showed was a landslide victory for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

"I would like to listen to the people's criticisms and we will have to rebuild our party all over again," Aso, the party's fourth leader in four years, said.

Exit polls have forecast a huge loss for Aso's LDP, which is expected to win only about 100 seats in the lower house of parliament, down from 300.

The DPJ is expected to win between 398 and 329 seats in the 480-member lower house of parliament.

'Revolutionary change'

"The people are angry with politics now and the ruling coalition," Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ leader, said.

"We felt a great sense of people wanting change for their livelihoods and we fought this election for a change in government."

Hatoyama, who stands to be Japan's next prime minister, said that he planned to form a coalition with some of Japan's smaller parties - the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party.

The opposition already controls the less powerful upper house of parliament following elections in 2007, but its election win is historic as the LDP has ruled for all but 10 months since it was founded in 1955.

Earlier Hiroyuki Hosoda, the LDP secretary-general, said that he and other officials in the former ruling party planned to step down from their posts over their party's apparent defeated.

The LDP's defeat is being seen as a demand for change by voters disappointed with the LDP's performance and worried about a record jobless rate and a rapidly ageing society that is inflating social security costs.

Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from Tokyo, said: "Many people would say this has been a long time coming and the LDP should have seen the need for change."

Challenges ahead

In the build up to the elections, Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ leader, promised voters "revolutionary change", pledging to focus spending on social-welfare, including cash handouts for job seekers in training and families with children.

The DPJ has also vowed to cut wasteful spending and reduce the power of Japan's bureaucrats.

But the Democrats will face an uphill struggle.

Economic experts have suggested that their spending plans could inflate Japan's massive public debt and push up government bond yields.

The ruling party's loss will end a three-way partnership between the LDP, big business and bureaucrats that turned Japan into an economic juggernaut in the aftermath of the Second World War.

That strategy foundered when Japan's "bubble" economy burst in the late 1980s and growth has stagnated since.

"This is about the end of the post-war political system in Japan," Gerry Curtis, a Japanese expert at Columbia University, said.

"It marks the end of one long era, and the beginning of another one about which there is a lot of uncertainty."