The International Herald Tribune says the historic victory of the Democratic Party in Japan is less an embrace of the opposition than a resounding rejection of the conservative incumbents.The outgoing Liberal Democratic Party has largely been responsible for rebuilding Japan after the WW2 with market orientated policies. However those policies saw urban areas pass out rural areas. The LDP also kept Japan firmly in Washington’s camp. The incoming Democratic Party has promised greater redistribution of wealth party and also a little more distance from Washington. It opposed the US War in Iraq, has a cooler attitude to American military bases in Japan and to the refuelling of American vessels by the Japanese navy in the Indian Ocean.

In the Wall Street Journal US officials have played down the emerging diplomatic rift, emphasising that ties between the Washington and Tokyo remain very important on both sides.

The Japan Times also calls the result of the election historic but according to some analysts it could take a year before any concrete results are seen. The party is not experienced in power and will have to grapple with Tokyo’s mammoth bureaucracy.

Moving to the elections in Gabon after the recent death of longstanding leader Omar Bongo, the results are as yet unclear this morning. Le Figaro published a profile of one of the three candidates, Ali Bongo, son of the recently deceased Gabonese leader. The paper says he doesn’t have the charisma of his father or charm of his mother who was a singer.
He speaks good French but he doesn’t speak the local dialects well.
As a result, there’s a big gap between Bongo and the poor of Gabon. those living in the slums in Gabon.

The Koaci pan-African news website thinks that Mambondou is the favourite to win the election. A poll of some 4,500 voters found that approximately 1,600 went for Mamboundou with only 800 voting for Bongo.

Silvio Berlusconi has fallen out dramatically with the Catholic Church. The Italian Prime Minister was meant to attend a “mass for forgiveness” in l’Aquila on Friday and then have a dinner with Cardinal Bertone – the Vatican Secretary of State and second in command only to the Pope. This dinner was intended to smooth over some of the cracks that have appeared in Berlusconi’s relations with the Vatican since the recent sex scandals that have surrounded the Italian premier. However, that meeting was cancelled after Il Giornale, a paper owned by Berlusconi’s brother, published compromising information about the editor of the Catholic Bishop’s newspaper Avvenire. In an article entitled, “Why we are unmasking the moralists”, Il Giornale claims that Avvenire’s editor, Dino Boffo should not be preaching about Berlusconi’s sex life. It goes on to claims Boffo had plea-bargained his way out of a harassment charge and had had a gay relationship. Today Il Giornale goes even further by printing that harassment charge on its front page. Boffo allegedly harassed the wife of the man he was having a relationship with to such an extent that she filed charges against him. They were settled out of court, according to Il Giornale.

Berlusconi has also opened libel proceedings against the left-leaning paper La Repubblica over its infamous “ten questions” that the Premier had not responded to surrounding a recent sex scandal.