Observers of Japanese politics who have long thought the country was ripe for a real two-party system are watching Sunday's election with a dual sense of incredulity -- surprise that it has taken so long to oust the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and surprise that it finally looks like happening.

Media surveys show the decade-old opposition Democratic Party is set to win the poll for parliament's powerful lower house -- and probably by a landslide, ushering in party leader Yukio Hatoyama at the head of a government pledged to spend more on consumers and workers than the companies that benefited most from LDP policies.

That would be only the second time the LDP has lost its grip on government since it was founded in 1955.

"Every one I talk to has that feeling -- they aren't sure it's really going to happen because they thought it would happen before," said Steven Reed, a political scientist at Chuo University who has been analysing Japanese politics for decades. "A lot of people predicted based on hope, and that's not a particularly good variable for predictions."

Those with long memories can't help but recall the only other time the LDP lost power, when heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa and dozens of other lawmakers bolted the party in 1993 and voted in favour of a no-confidence motion against then-premier Kiichi Miyazawa, triggering a political quake that led to the formation of a multiparty, anti-LDP coalition under the telegenic Morihiro Hosokawa.

Hosokawa entranced a public more accustomed to staid, dark-suited and often inarticulate leaders with his media-savvy ways -- striding before cameras at an international leaders' summit with a white scarf around his neck, using a teleprompter at news conferences -- and promising to cut the bureaucratic red-tape that critics said was strangling the world's second-biggest economy.

Eight months later, though, proponents of change watched in dismay as haggling in Hosokawa's eight-party coalition and talk of scandal prompted Hosokawa to step down. Two months after that, the LDP returned to power in an odd-couple alliance with a Socialist premier at the top.

"There was a feeling then that this would work," Reed said of the mood when Hosokawa took power. "The problem was, the LDP lost, but nobody won ... You need an alternative, and building an alternative is not that easy."

Corruption, policy missteps and the fraying of a once-mighty political machine underminded the LDP's support in ensuing years but the ever-adaptable party stayed in power through coalitions.

And when its days appeared numbered under the wildly unpopular prime minister Yoshiro Mori, the LDP turned in 2001 --albeit reluctantly -- to the charismatic Junichiro Koizumi, a wavy-haired maverick with a knack for sound bites, to revive its fortunes by staging a battle against his own party's hide-bound ways under a slogan of reform.

Koizumi's "magic" saved the party for another five years, and he led the LDP to a massive election victory in 2005. But his three successors presided over declining support rates as they stumbled over policies and personnel and failed to connect with voters.

Now smouldering voter anger -- more of a slow burn against the LDP than feverish enthusiasm for the opposition Democrats -- finally looks set to turn out the LDP, as a wary electorate prepares to give change a chance -- even if they're not sure that the new crew can do much better.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Issei Kato (top)

Opinion polls show the opposition Democratic Party of Japan is set for a runaway victory in Sunday's general election, but voters are showing none of the enthusiasm that swept Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency last year.

When I talked to more than a dozen voters in a small town near Hiroshima, western Japan,  they were interested in the election and had a lot to say about it. And most were looking for change -- but not with a great deal of fervour.

Perhaps that's because I was in Higashihiroshima, a conservative rural area surrounded by rice fields and known for its sake. The district has always voted for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has ruled Japan for all but 10 months during the past half century.

The voters were also well aware of the raft of challenges, such as growing social welfare costs, facing a new government, and seemed to have low expectations for the Democrats.

"We can go back to the old way if the Democratic party fails," 69-year-old Hiroaki Yamashita told me.

Still, they were pondering a once-unthinkable Democratic Party victory, not due to any wild enthusiam for the opposition Democrats but more so because they were fed up with the LDP.

"In the countryside, many people have been bound by personal connections with the LDP. But it is time for change," 60-year-old Reiko Nishihashi told me.

"We have to let the Democrats take power," she said at a rally by Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama outside a shopping mall, adding she had always voted for the LDP in the past.

It is a common story when talking to voters in Japan, who look past claims that the Democrats have yet to say where they will get the money to fund their campaign promises.

It may not be an Obama moment, but it may deliver a landslide for the opposition party on Sunday.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Kim Kyung Hoon

Between running an election campaign and trying to save European carmaker Opel at the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was baking a currant cake and writing out a shopping list for her husband.

Merkel has sought in recent months to soften her business-like image by opening up about her life at home, hoping to reach out to more voters ahead of the federal election on September 27.

(Photo: Merkel attends the inauguration of the Oslo Opera House, April 13, 2008, Reuters/Bjorn Sigurdson)

As Germany’s first woman chancellor, Merkel used an interview with feminist magazine Emma this week to illustrate her down-to-earth approach to juggling work and family.

According to the Allensbach Institute, a leading pollster, Merkel did not score better with women than she did with men in the last federal election in 2005.

But her gender may be playing a role this year — some 41 percent of women plan to vote for her conservatives next month compared to 34 percent of men.

Merkel, ranked by Forbes as the world’s most powerful woman for a fourth straight year, said she really enjoyed cooking and did so whenever she got the chance, sharing other domestic chores with her husband when their housekeeper was on holiday.

“My husband doesn’t cook, mostly he shops and on Friday I write him a list so he can do the shopping for the weekend,” she said.

Merkel, 55, also divulged details about her look, which was the topic of a hot debate during the federal election campaign in 2005, when she traded a low-maintenance page-boy cut for something more stylish.

“At home I prefer wearing jeans and a jumper or a cardigan,” she said. “As Chancellor I have a make-up artist. But I still have a very pragmatic style: the hairdo must last for 12 or more hours, and I can’t be powdering my nose every two hours.”

Dark smoke covered the Athens sky over the weekend, its thick plumes rising over the Acropolis and rekindling memories of the huge, deadly fires of 2007 that nearly cost Greece’s ruling conservatives their re-election.

For Athenians glued to TV pictures of frantic residents trying to battle flames reaching their backyards with buckets and garden houses, it was much more than a dramatic struggle to rescue property.

What they were watching was some of the last remaining patches of green around the metropolis of nearly 5 million people going up in smoke, the capital’s “lungs” giving up.

From a small town at the foot of the Acropolis in the early 1800s, Athens has grown into a huge bustling capital with heavy traffic and pollution. It relies heavily on its surrounding green hills to provide oxygen and cool it down in the difficult summer months.

Long the victim of greedy developers, the forests of Attica have been receding as buildings replace what was once pine and fir trees. Amid suspicions that arson was behind the weekend fires, a public prosecutor has ordered an inquiry.

“Despite the huge destruction wiping out Attica’s forests in recent decades, no measures are taken,” said the liberal Eleftherotypia daily. “How much more destruction must Attica suffer to shake a corrupt system?”

Greek blogs like http://press-gr.blogspot.com/ and http://fimotro.blogspot.com/ also decried the illegal construction that has sprouted in the forests around Athens after every big fire. They say many of the homes razed during the weekend blazes should have been have torn down by the state.

“Nobody said that many of the houses destroyed were illegal,” said press-gr.

Environmental groups blame the lack of enforcement of strict zoning legislation for the chaotic development that has expanded the capital in recent decades. If a developer sets fire to a forest and the state turns a blind eye to the buildings that appear there afterwards, they ask, what is to prevent a repeat of this weekend’s destruction?

(A fire-fighting helicopter drops water over a home in Anatoli village northeast of Athens August 24, 2009. Fire-fighters battled wildfires on Monday that swept through homes and huge swathes of forest near Athens, forcing thousands to flee, and were beating back the main front of the inferno on its fourth day. REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis (GREECE DISASTER ENVIRONMENT))

The opposition wants to cut the sale of alcohol in a state that it rules and now the government wants to restrict Internet access .

Malaysia is a multicultural country of 27 million people in Southeast Asia. It has a majority Muslim population that of course is not allowed to drink by religion. Yet clearly some do as shown by the sentencing to caning for a young woman handed down recently

(Photo: Prime Minister Najib Razak leaving the National Mosque as he prepared to mark his first 100 days in office in July. Reuters/Bazuki Muhammad)

Proposals by the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party, which wants an Islamic state, could effectively end the sale of alcohol in the country’s richest state, Selangor, which is next to the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Its rules would penalise not only Muslims that consumed alcohol, but also for example Muslim shop assistants in say Tesco’s who could be fined if they sold alcohol.

This is coming from a country whose most celebrated film maker, PJ Ramlee, made movies featuring alcohol, smoking and night clubs as well as cross-racial relationships and whose first premier Tunku Abdul Rahman, a Muslim of course and a member of one of Malaysia’s royal families, was fond of  whisky. 

And the Internet?
If you want to find out anything in Malaysia, you need to read the net. The country’s newspapers, largely owned by the political parties that have run this country for 51 years and which need to be licensed annually, feed their readers a steady diet of pro-government propaganda.

All of the mainstream Malaysian media ignored the Internet restrictions story. The government insists it is only targeting porn with its proposed Internet filters, though few believe them.

That’s not to say the Internet here is perfect - it is as prone to rumour and exaggeration as anywhere else - but sites like Malaysian Insider, Malaysiakini and the Nutgraph provide a critical view.

Numerous blogs both anti- and pro-government provide views and news. Though it must be admitted that the opposition has been far more nimble than the sometimes clumsy government efforts. Leading opposition MP Lim Kit Siang tweets avidly as does the government’s Khairy Jamaluddin, while ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad maintains a blog that is acerbic, witty and can appear vindictive.
Whether you take all of them seriously is another matter.  

For that matter, Reuters maintains a Twitter presence here too. 

The most famous, or infamous, blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin has been detained, charged with sedition and sued. Though he appears to have skipped the country to avoid new charges.
He alleged that Prime Minister Najib Razak had been involved in the murder of a Mongolian model. Najib says the allegations are opposition lies and strongly denies them.

One of Najib’s first moves was to try to set up an effective Internet presence to promote his premiership. The site is called 1Malaysia. The brand has spawned a foundation, of which Najib is unsurprisingly the patron, and recently a savings scheme.
Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansoor has followed suit and went online this week, urging web users not to be seduced by defamatory and seditious websites. 

Malaysia  wants to be as economically advanced as Singapore and South Korea, wants foreign investment and to produce a high-skilled “knowledge economy”. Can it do this and seemingly adopt political restrictions on a par with China and moral restrictions like those of Saudi Arabia?

 Can it bridge huge divides between the opposition and the government or will Najib continue with crackdowns on dissent  as he seeks to maintain a grip on power beyond elections due by 2013?

 Since she became Argentina’s first elected female president at the end of 2007, Cristina Fernandez has often complained that things are tougher for her because she is a woman.

 Some analysts and historians say that while women in power do face sexism, Fernandez’s frequent playing of the gender card can be detrimental because it emphasizes a perceived position of weakness.

Only a few months after taking office,  Fernandez got into a messy conflict with farmers over taxes, which did lasting damage to her approval ratings.

“It is harder because I’m a woman,” Fernandez said frequently during the farm dispute, which persists more than a year after it began.

In one speech, she said she had committed two sins that explained the ferocity of the attacks against her and her government: first, winning office with lots of votes and second, being a woman.

Since her party was defeated in a June midterm election, the president has kept using the gender issue as sort of a safe-conduct pass.

Last Friday, when she arrived half an hour late to a South American summit in Asuncion, Paraguay, she complained that the media unfairly pick on her when she is late.

“I’ve attended three international summits in which men arrived late and we had to wait for them for half an hour and nobody reported that story,” said Fernandez, who followed her husband, Nestor Kirchner, into the presidency.

Women in power are often more closely observed than men regarding their looks, emotions and families, and Fernandez is no exception. Even prestigious media outlets in Argentina have criticized her makeup and hair, and during her campaign for election she denied reports that she had had cosmetic surgery. She has also been critized for tearing up during speeches or having a masculine attitude. Her inauguration outfit was scrutinized and criticized for copying Spain’s Princess Leticia.

In neighboring Chile, President Michelle Bachelet was said to have too masculine a style, and when she was campaigning there was media speculation over whether she could combine the presidency with raising her children as a single parent. She complained about machismo in the political system when she took office and said women were judged differently from men. But nowadays, with her popularity high, she has been silent on the gender issue.

German Chancellor  Angela Merkel has never blamed gender for bad treatment, although her clothes and a low-cut dress she wore to the opera have been criticized.

German media sometimes refer to her as Angie, an informality that Fernandez also faces. Newspapers often call her “Cristina,” although no male president has ever been referred to by his first name.

PHOTO CREDIT- Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner waves (2nd L) during a group photo at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain April 19, 2009. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Breaking into the summer holiday lull, Austrian politics has gotten into a lather over a far-right populist’s call for a referendum on whether a mainly German-speaking region of northern Italy should rejoin Austria.

No matter how far-fetched, his proposal raised a hue and cry by challenging the taboo of old unreconstructed nationalism in a country restlessly determined to live down its Nazi past.

South Tyrol - Alto Adige in Italian - is an autonomous, Alpine province of Italy bordering Austria. It was annexed by Italy from defeated Austria-Hungary at the end of World War One.

Italy granted increasing self-government to South Tyrol in the decades after World War Two, defusing separatist unrest by Austro-German speakers. It is now among Italy’s richest regions, with an open border to Austria thanks to EU integration.

But Martin Graf, a rightist deputy speaker of Austria’s parliament, declared on Sunday that South Tyrol was actually “part of overall Tyrol”, and only “currently” within Italy.

The universal right of self-determination should apply for all “the German people” in Europe - just as those in old Communist East Germany got their wish to merge into one Germany at the end of the Cold War in 1990. “It’s time to ask the people if there should be one Tyrol,” Graf said.

Graf owes his parliamentary post due to the fact that his far-right Freedom Party replaced the Greens as Austria’s No. 3 party in last year’s parliamentary election.

Some Freedom members have called into question an Austrian law that prohibits neo-Nazi activities. Graf has links to a rightist fraternity, Olympia, that nurses old German nationalist causes and has acted as a platform for Holocaust deniers.

So his South Tyrol remarks were unsettling and drew swift fire from mainstream conservative and centre-left politicians protective of Austria’s delicate democratic reputation.

Some pointed out what they deemed the absurdity and danger of redrawing borders or re-championing national differences in a 21st century European Union that has largely done away with frontier barriers in a spirit of common peace and prosperity.

“(Graf) should avoid such ill-considered and unrealistic statements,” said Guenther Platter, conservative People’s Party governor of Austria’s (North) Tyrol province. “Borders have long since fallen and we live today in the heart of a common Europe. Cooperation between (the two Tyrols) is better than ever.”

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said Graf’s “radical, unrealistic” comments were at odds with good neighbourly relations with Italy and invited misunderstanding.

Social Democratic party general secretary Laura Rudas accused Graf of “political pyromania”.

A defiant Graf retorted: “None of my attackers are in the position to explain why there should be a self-determination right for Tibetans and Kurds, but it is still being withheld from South Tyroleans after 90 years.”

The solid front of criticism was briefly punctured by a statement of support for Graf from the South Tyrol Freedom faction in the provincial assembly in Bolzano (Bozen in German).

Unconvinced, Austrian media sought out the ethnically German governor of South Tyrol, Luis Durnwalder. He said he was convinced that if a vote were held tomorrow, most South Tyroleans would choose to stay as they are now within Italy.

 ”If parties had six months to campaign on this, you might see a small majority for ‘Anschluss’ with Austria,” he told Austrian state television, using the discredited word for Austria’s enthusiastic accession to Nazi Germany in 1938.

“But it wouldn’t be realistic. Italy would never consent. Violence or terror naturally would be no option. And, given existing treaties, we would never get a majority (for rejoining Austria) in the United Nations.”

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said he would try again to have parliament dismiss the rightist from the speaker job over what he called behaviour damaging to Austrian interests.

But Finance Minister Josef Proell said that while Graf’s remarks were “totally unacceptable and scurrilous”, his conservatives would not contribute votes crucial for a two-thirds majority needed to topple Graf.

He said it would be wrong to turn Graf into “a martyr via parliamentary manoeuvre” and he should resign himself.

Graf ruled that out, saying he could not be punished for exercising his right to free speech.

(Photo: Martin Graf drinks beer during a Fraternity Group meeting in Innsbruck June 20, 2009.  REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichler)

The Austrian government debt agency’s two-year old foray into subprime investments has turned into a political hot potato and sparked an increasingly heated debate between the Social Democrats and conservatives, caught in an uneasy but coalition government without viable alternative.

Austria’s audit court last week revealed that the agency, which in its staid day job issues government bonds and makes sure state coffers are full when they need to be, started to moonlight on money markets in 2002 to earn a little extra money on the side.

Its cash position ballooned from an average 4.5 billion euros in 2002 to a peak of 26.8 billion euros in October 2007. This level “was not only determined by economic necessities, but was also meant to generate additional revenues,” the audit court said in its report.

Sure enough, as much as 10.8 billion euros went into asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP), a class of structured investments that became disreputable when the subprime crisis broke out in 2007. Luckily, the debt agency got away only slightly bruised, with up to 380 million euros in possible losses from those investments.

Even though the loss looks manageable (it equals 0.13 percent of Austria’s GDP), and no rules seem to have broken, two former and the current finance minister – all conservatives – as well as the agency itself find itself at the centre of a debate seeking someone to blame.

The conservatives were caught slightly wrong-footed. Still basking in election successes based on voters’ perception that they, rather than the Social Democrats, were the safe pair of hands to steer the country through the economic crisis, they suddenly faced charges of gambling away taxpayers’ money.

Karl-Heinz Grasser, under whose reign as finance minister the agency’s side business started, and whose life after politics mainly consisted of modelling and launching an ill-fated joint venture with coffee-roasting heir and banker Julius Meinl, said the losses didn’t happen under him – dodging the question why the side business was started in the first place.

His successor Wilhelm Molterer – one of the possible Austrian candidates for European Commissioner – said he stopped the investment when the losses occurred – leaving unanswered why he presided over the greatest expansion of the play money purse. And incumbent Josef Proell, who took office only in 2008, had no convincing explanation why he didn’t mention the losses when he answered a parliamentary inquiry about the agency’s investment policy earlier this year.

The opportunity to milk the incident has not been lost on Social Democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann. "If more than 300 million euros in tax money are at risk you cannot pretend this is business as usual, everything’s alright. This is an insult for taxpayers,” he told Austrian radio. Faymann has summoned Proell, central bank governor Ewald Nowotny – who had to cut short his holiday – and the audit court head to discuss the case next Friday before the occasion to present himself as the true guardian of taxpayers’ money goes away.

Photos: 1) Chairman of Meinl Power Management Karl-Heinz Grasser listens during a news conference in Vienna July 1, 2008. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader. 2) Austrian Finance Minister Wilhelm Molterer addresses a news conference in Vienna April 12, 2007. "Holen Sie sich Ihr Geld zurueck" reads "Retrieve your money". REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader

A top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used an odd turn of phrase to explain what some see as a puzzling demand put to Palestinians by the right-wing leader as a condition for any any Israeli agreement to establishing a state in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu wants Palestinians to recognise Israel explicitly as a Jewish state, in addition to their having recognised Israeli sovereignty as part of an interim peace deal in 1993. He feels this would symbolise an historic end of conflict, his aides have explained.

At a briefing summing up Netanyahu’s first 100 days in office, advisor Uzi Arad and several other officials rejected criticism from centrist Kadima party leaders who accused the Israeli leader of achieving little on the diplomatic front since his government was sworn in late in March.

Netanyahu had clearly laid out the terms for any future peace deal, they said.  Arad emphasised what he saw as the importance of seeking further Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s existence, before Israel would agree to Palestinians achieving statehood in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war.

“Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, which they have so far refused to do, is not a matter of a kiss on the forehead, but a declaration of intent,” Arad said.

“If they don’t do it, they will have a serious problem, something everyone understands,” Arad added, alluding to what would be Israel’s refusal to reach the two-state deal the United  States and Europe have been seeking, unless the condition were met.

Palestinians dismiss Netanyahu’s condition as inconsistent with international law and say it isn’t up to any nation to define the nationality of another.

Another official in Netanyahu’s office said he doubted the Palestinians would ever accept the demand, averring, “because they’re not interested in making peace.”

“If you think that someone stole your house, then you’re never going to make peace,” the official said.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are stalled anyway over the issue of Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. Palestinians insist on a building freeze before any return to the negotiating table, while Netanyahu is negotiating with Washington for a partial continuation of the construction.

To read more blogs from Israel and the Palestinian territories, check out AxisMundi Jerusalem.