DATE=11/09/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=JAPAN / ELECTION (L)

NUMBER=2-309614

BYLINE=AMY BICKERS

DATELINE=TOKYO

CONTENT=

INTRO: Early exit polls indicate that Japan's dominant political group, the Liberal Democratic Party, won Sunday's elections, but with a smaller majority in the lower house of parliament than it held previously. As V-O-A's Amy Bickers in Tokyo reports, that could make it harder for Mr. Koizumi to move forward with his controversial economic reform plans.

TEXT: Exit polls suggest that the Liberal Democratic Party and its two smaller coalition partners will retain power after Japan's general election Sunday. But the ruling bloc is projected to have lost a significant number of the seats it held in the last parliament.

The polls indicate that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's L-D-P lost as many as 25 seats, and may no longer hold a majority of the 480 seats on its own. The three-party coalition might have lost as many as 30 seats compared with the previous parliament.

The expected win means that Mr. Koizumi, who himself was re-elected, is guaranteed a second term, but it is not clear if he will have the public support needed to move forward with his ambitious plans for cuts in government spending, privatization and cleaning up the troubled banking sector.

Satomi Toguchi, a 35 year-old housewife, says she believes reviving the economy was the key concern for most voters in this election.

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She says that she and her husband run a business, and for them, the economy is the top priority. She wants the government to make more progress in this area.

The election pitted the L-D-P, in power almost continuously for a half century, against the five-year-old Democratic Party. The Democrats recently merged with a smaller opposition group and tried to cast themselves as a genuine alternative to the L-D-P.

Although other parties have provided token opposition to the L-D-P over the years, the nation of one-hundred-27-million people has never had a true two-party system. The Democratic Party hopes to provide that, by becoming a real alternative to the L-D-P.

The exit polls suggest that the Democrats made a strong showing. Early indications are that it might have increased its 137 seats in the old parliament by 25 percent or more.

Other than the economy, no one issue dominated the election. Both main parties promised to shore up the pension system to cope with an increasingly aged population, and pledged to create new jobs. Mr. Koizumi's L-D-P supports plans to send troops and cash to war-torn Iraq, but Naoto Kan, the leader of the Democrats, spoke out against these moves. (SIGNED)

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