Election fever

Japan is in the middle of the election campaign. Exactly the same campaign broadcast featuring the leader of each party is being rerun every morning and every night. I watched Hatoyama, the prospective winner, say,"We should put an end to the politics of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, for our better future," on TV over and over again. According to their logic, bureaucrats are our common enemies. I wonder how many people will take these words at face value. Few will deny the fact that Japan's success and prosperity since the end of the last war owes a great deal to the bureaucrats' tactical ways of making quasi-socialistic policies under the disguise of free market capitalism. As an example, Japan's health insurance system, which covers each and every one of us, was first thought up and created by truly insightful bureaucrats in the wake of the end of the occupation. They modeled the system after those of Northern European countries like Sweden, which they admired.
While lambasting the bureaucrats on the one hand, the Democratic Party is saying the "free-market-is-everything-ism" is ruining this country. Some analysts predict they won't be able to do much without help from the powerful bureaucrats, let alone have control over them.
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