Voters angry with political-funding scandal
The party promised to clean up its finances ahead of the election but allowed most of more than 40 members who failed to record political donations to stand for the party.
Rot In Piss, Conservatives. My only reservation at hearing this news is that the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which is the second-biggest plurality after the so-called “Liberal” Democratic Party of Japan, is against nuclear energy. They seem to be on the rise rapidly since their reorganization in 2017. It would be nice to see Japan finally start moving at least a LITTLE more in a less authoritarian, less traditionalist, less STAGNANT direction.
To be fair, Japan has some historical precedence for nuclear energy causing problems.
Fukushima, yes, which was actually a tsunami problem and an “insufficient preparation” problem (the plant’s sea wall was built too low)
Arguably more hardship has been caused by the extended evacuation than whatever the radiation would have caused.
Then there is the horrific, grisly, and heartwrenchingly tragic demise of the two unfortunate nuclear plant workers who were haplessly involved in a criticality incident at the Joyo Fast Reactor in Tokai, September 1999 where a uranyl nitrate solution was poured into a precipitation tank of the wrong material…
…
(One could also, if one is crass, make a reference to nuclear weaponry issues, but that is pointedly a different technological exploration than energy in the same way that gasoline for internal combustion engines is a fundamentally different application than napalm or a fuel-air thermobaric munition even if they both rely on the inherent properties of the principal material involved)
Fukushima is still recent enough to shape public opinion, however.
Do they have any good options party wise to move in that direction?
CDP is a move in that direction relative to the faltering LDP. Japan seems less caught in the 2-party trap than some electoral systems, and generally speaking an anti-conservative coalition would move the needle where it desperately needs to go.
Unfortunately only the lower house was subject to this election so they’re not rotting anywhere.
