By Ma Jie, Matthew Chozick

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) officially unveiled its manifesto for the Aug. 30 general election Monday, highlighted by pledges to raise people's livelihood, eliminate bureaucracy and wasteful spending, as well as more pragmatic foreign policies.

Japan's main opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama announces his party's policy manifesto during a news conference in Tokyo July 27, 2009. Signboard reads "Conduct government-change election". [Xinhua]

The opposition party pledged the creation of a monthly "child allowance" of 26,000 yen per child to families, abolishing expressway tolls, waiving tuition fees for public high schools and establishing a system to provide farmers subsidies.

To reform Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s administrative structure, DPJ plans to establish a national strategy bureau under the direct control of the prime minister, and a cabinet committee comprising a small number of cabinet members, with an eye on promoting lawmaker-initiated policies. It also plans to stop holding a meeting of administrative vice ministers, according to the manifesto.

On the foreign policies front, the DPJ adopted a more pragmatic approach, saying it will forge close Japan-US ties, But it fell short of referring to an plan to suspend the refueling mission by the Maritime Self-Defense force in the Indian Ocean in the manifesto.

The elimination of the call to end the MSDF's refueling mission means that if the DPJ gains control of the government it would allow the MSDF to continue refueling at least until the January deadline specified under the special measures law that authorizes the mission.

According to virtually all of Japan's polls and pundits, the LDP is set to lose many seats in August's general election. The DPJ, comprised largely of former LDP members, is set to come into power and offset the LDP's majority.

Both DPJ and LDP lawmakers campaign by blasting each other's policies. The LDP have been ridiculing DPJ's policy pledges by alleging that the opposition can't fund them.

According to a Daily Yomiuri calculation, the child allowance alone would cost about 5.3 trillion yen annually.

The DPJ has argued these fiscal sources could be obtained by rewriting the state budget and eliminating wasteful budgetary appropriations.

Besides, some of LDP lawmakers believed the DPJ avoided some of the LDP's conservative rhetoric, but managed to have a lot of priorities in common with the LDP.

"DPJ has a tendency to copy what has been successful," LDP House of Representatives member Kuniko Inoguchi, 55, told a press conference last week. Inoguchi, who seeks reelection, complained, "every time I come up with formative ideas they [DPJ] tend to put it in their manifesto... they should have their own policy mind."

Pension system is where one of the similarities exist. The LDP vowed to strengthen the function of minimum basic pensions to support elderly people with no or low pensions. The DPJ also prioritized pension reform and will address flaws in pension record keeping as well as offer a minimum pension financed by taxes.

DPJ also drew up similar foreign policies with LDP than it had previously campaigned for. Local press said it is disappointing that the DPJ has left out some foreign policy issues which its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, along with others, had been propagating.

They included the party's earlier insistence that it would ask the United Sates to renounce its first-strike use of nuclear weapons and calls for the relocation of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan to a site outside of Okinawa Prefecture.

"This risks obscuring, all too quickly, the goal of building an 'equal partnership' between Japan and the United States, which the Minshuto (DPJ) seeks to pursue. How is the party to maintain its foreign policy principles based on the Constitution?" The Asahi Shimbun questioned in an editorial Monday.

However, whether or not the DPJ forms its own "policy mind" before the upcoming election, points of commonality between the parties ought to bring a degree of stability to this country in tumult.

(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2009)