The vote has not even finished for the House of Representatives members of the Democratic Party of Japan and NHK is telling us that the supporters of Kano Michihiko agreed to vote for Noda Yoshihiko if he made it to the second round and the supporters of Mabuchi Sumio have been encouraged to vote for "anyone but Kaeda Banri" in the event of runoff.
Given the presumed agreement between the Noda and Maehara Seiji camps to vote for the candidate of the other in the event only one of them made it through to the runoff, Kaieda Banri is about to get wiped off the map.
Which means that the pro-Ozawa, pro-Hatoyama cohort has shrunk by 50 members in a year, enough to render the Ozawa threat not quite impotent but definiteyl not potent either.
Just how Ozawa and Hatoyama will react to this defeat is of course the next fun question in the docket.
That is if we can trust NHK's sources.
Or that Noda's 102 votes was not inflated someway, somehow..... :-) If so obviously by not enough to outweigh both Kano and Mabuchi swinging to Noda.
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