Tokyo poll eyed for clue to fate of PM, ruling bloc

By Isabel Reynolds

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and his opposition rival pitched their policies on Friday at the start of a local election likely to affect whether the unpopular premier can keep his job ahead of a tough national election.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly vote on July 12 is being seen as a bellwether for the national election, due by October, that Aso's ruling bloc is in danger of losing.

Polls show Aso's business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is likely to lose power to the opposition Democratic Party [ID:nT44020], which has pledged to cut wasteful spending, focus on the needs of ordinary people and forge a diplomatic stance less reliant on close security ally the United States.

"We should build the kind of politics that values people over concrete," Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama told a crowd in Tokyo, in a dig at the LDP's decades of what critics say was wasteful spending on unnecessary public works projects.

His speech sparked scattered applause from the crowd gathered on a busy street corner in Tokyo's Tsukiji district, some wearing the rubber boots of workers in the massive nearby fish market.

One bystander said the LDP's lengthy reign had produced corruption that could be cleaned up by a change in government.

"It has created this kind of bad politics," said Chizuru Imai, a Tsukiji fish trader for 40 years. "It's all about connections. It's money politics. The Democrats say they will change all that."