Towards the fag end of the campaign period, the top leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner in the coalition government, the New Komei Party, sensed some kind of debacle in the election. But that the debacle would turn out to be an outright rout was beyond their imagination.

So, too, was the extent of surprise for the leadership of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the main beneficiary of the people's eroding trust in the prime minister and his policies that, in recent days, created so much controversy. The top leadership of DPJ proclaimed until the voting on July 29, that the party would be satisfied if it got 55 seats out of a total of 121 at stake.

Winning 60 seats, or almost half of the total seats at stake, has so far been the best result shown by any opposition party in the upper house elections throughout the post World War II period.

The bicameral Japanese Diet has a peculiar setting among the two houses, in relation to both the number of seats and the duration of its functioning. The lower house, known officially as the House of Representatives, which yields much power and has the right to make the choice of the prime minister, has 480 members who are elected for a four-year term.

The upper house, or the House of Counselor, on the other hand, has 242 members who are elected for a six-year term. Elections for half of the seats of the upper house are held every three years, and unlike the lower house that can be dissolved at any time, the upper house is not subjected to any dissolution, meaning that members elected continue to serve for the full six-year term.

Members of the House of Representative, on the other hand, though elected for a four-year period, rarely completed their terms as dissolution of the house has become a frequently resorted to practice in post the World War II period.

Of the 121 seats that were at stake this time, 73 were for single seat electoral districts, where candidates representing various political groups and blocks contested directly. For the rest, the winners were decided on the basis of proportional representation of votes that each party or group received.

This blending of two different systems of voting is a unique characteristic of Japanese electoral law, designed to ensure maximum fairness in election results, and is worth following by countries like Bangladesh.

With the approach of the voting date on July 29, the Japanese media continued focusing on the possible outcome of the upper house election, and a majority of the opinion pools gave clear hints that things were not moving that smoothly for the ruling camp. But there was hardly any hint that things were, indeed, that bad.

The final results show that LDP could only manage 37 seats out of 121 at stake, down from its pre-election share of 64, and falling far behind the main opposition DPJ, which to its own surprise, bagged 60 seats. As a result, including seats that were not contested this time, DPJ has emerged as the largest block in the upper house, dislodging LDP from its number 1 position in the house for the first time since the party was founded in 1955.

The LDP's junior partner, New Komei Party, also suffered a setback. Though the ruling alliance has 70 percent of the seats in the lower house, its loss of control of the upper house will radically alter the way the Diet activities have been managed by the coalition. And the first confrontation is not far off, as the ruling coalition is getting ready for the deliberation of a bill during the extraordinary Diet session in autumn, which would allow the extension of a special-measure law to keep Japanese Self Defense Forces deployed in the Indian Ocean for the US-led war on terror.

Soon after gaining majority in the upper house of the Diet, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa put the ruling coalition on the spot by vowing to block the planned legislation. His strategy is to force a confrontation between the ruling coalition and the opposition camp, which he hopes could lead to a dissolution of the more powerful lower house.

Earlier the opposition leader called on the cabinet of Prime Minister Abe to resign. Speaking at a party meeting two days after voting, Ozawa strongly criticized Abe's decision to remain in office despite the crushing defeat suffered by the LDP, and termed the decision as a selfish one that lacked common sense.

But the prime minister seems to be holding his position firmly, and was not bothered at all by the rhetoric of the opposition leader. He didn't waste much time in declaring that he intended to remain in office, and both the LDP executive board and New Komei leadership too had given their go ahead for Abe to stay on.

But how long he will be able to hold power remains an open question, as there are already growing calls, even within the LDP, for initiating the process of looking for an alternative.

Though the upper house of the Japanese Diet has little leverage in deciding the fate of the cabinet, the LDP's defeat in the upper house poll, in fact, forced the prime minister to bow out at least twice in the recent past. After the 1989 election, which left the party with only 36 of the seats at stake, then prime minister Sosuke Uno stepped down. Then again in 1998, then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto left the office after LDP could gain only 44 seats.

So, many in Japan now sees Abe's announcement of keeping his post as a desperate attempt by a besieged leader to keep his boat floating. Moreover, recent opinion polls conducted by two of the country's leading newspapers give clear indication that a majority of the people in Japan now want to see him go.

According to a post-election survey conducted by Asahi Shimbun, 47 percent respondents said that Abe should leave office, compared with about 40 percent who said that he should continue serving as prime minister. In the Yomiuri Shimbun survey, 45 percent favoured his exit.

The extension of the anti-terror law bill, as a result, might turn out to be a catalyst in the process of initiating changes at the top. The government is desperately trying to win over support of even a few DPJ upper house members to ensure smooth passage of the bill in the house.

But how far that backdoor maneuver turns out to be viable in the post-election scenario remains to be seen. The most plausible outcome, therefore, might be a negotiated settlement that would see the bill going through the house at the expense of Abe and his cabinet.

This, according to some observers, might happen as early as within two months, and until then Abe might continue to repeat the vow that he could not leave the country leaderless at a time when it was facing serious problems.

Mozurul Huq is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.