Tokyo ? Japan’s parliament has convened to formally select former opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama as prime minister, following his party’s landslide election victory last month.

Parliament convened Wednesday in a special session for the vote. Hatoyama’s left-of-center party controls 308 of the 480 seats in parliament’s lower chamber, which selects the prime minister.

Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet resigned earlier in the day to pave the way for the new government.

The selection of Hatoyama would end more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by Aso’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party.

Hatoyama has promised to shake up Japan’s political system, cutting government waste, reinvigorating the world’s second-largest economy and focusing policies on consumers, not big business.

“I am excited by the prospect of changing history,” Hatoyama said early today. “I also feel the weight of the responsibility of making history.”