Japan main opposition head hopes for combative debate with Ishiba

Noda? The opposition is in name only. Debate is meaningless. Just a waste of time.

Opposition parties either get together or get out of the way.

Why is it everytime the opposition is mentioned, it is brushed away as if it does not exist?

toto_kibokoToday  09:52 am JST

Why is it everytime the opposition is mentioned, it is brushed away as if it does not exist?

It might as well not exist. They're not necessarily bad people with bad ideas, but they've been completely marginalised by the LDP. The opposition is fragmented into small parties that will never win majorities by themselves so they're always talking about cooperating with the other parties, which means you can't rely in anything they say about policies because they would have to change or compromise on them to get into coalition governments. The cost of running in elections in prohibitively high and unlike the LDP they don't get much corporate backing, so they daren't risk wasting millions of yen on campaigns against LDP incumbents that they have little chance of beating. For instance, Ishiba has never faced a CDP opponent in an election even though they're supposedly the main opposition party.