Litmus test for Japan’s Ishiba as country heads for general election

TOKYO: Japan voted on Sunday in its tightest election in years, with new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his veteran Liberal Democratic Party facing possibly its worst result since 2009.

Opinion polls show the conservative LDP and its junior coalition partners risk missing out on a majority, in what could be a major setback for Ishiba.

The 67-year-old former defense minister took office last month after being chosen to lead the LDP, which has ruled Japan for almost all of the past seven decades, and called a snap election.

But voters in the world’s fourth-largest economy are angry about rising prices and the fallout from a party slush fund scandal that helped sink previous Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

“I made my decision by first looking at his economic policies and measures to reduce inflation,” Tokyo voter Yoshihiro Uchida, 48, told AFP on Sunday. “I voted for people who can make our lives better.”

Ishiba has pledged to address the “quiet emergency” of Japan’s declining population through revitalizing downtrodden rural areas and family-friendly measures such as flexible working hours.

But he has scaled back his stance on issues including allowing married couples to have different surnames. He has also named only two female ministers to his Cabinet.

The security policy “geek” has backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, though he warned it “won’t happen overnight”.

Several surveys conducted by Japanese media have found that the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito may struggle to get the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority.

Ishiba has made this threshold his goal, and missing it would weaken his position in the LDP and mean finding other coalition partners or leading a minority government.

“We want to start anew as a fair, just and honest party, and seek your mandate,” Ishiba said at a rally on Saturday.

LDP’s ‘option’

Local media speculated that Ishiba could potentially even resign immediately to take responsibility, becoming Japan’s shortest-serving prime minister in the post-war period.

The current record is held by Naruhiko Higashikuni, who served for 54 days – four days longer than British leader Liz Truss will serve in 2022 – just after Japan’s 1945 defeat in World War II.

In many districts, LDP candidates are on a par with candidates from the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), the second-largest party in parliament, led by popular former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

“LDP politics is about quickly implementing policies for people who give them lots of money,” Noda, 67, told his supporters on Saturday.

“But those in a vulnerable position… have been ignored,” he accused the government of providing inadequate aid for survivors of an earthquake in central Japan.

Noda’s stance “is very similar to that of the LDP. He is basically conservative,” Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, told AFP.

“The CDP or Noda could be an alternative to the LDP. Many voters think so,” Kamikubo said.

Ishiba has promised not to actively support candidates who are running in the election despite being embroiled in a funding scandal.

“I want to focus on young candidates rather than those with long careers, because they can bring something different,” said a 63-year-old voter who gave his surname as Taniyama, adding that he had “made his decision by elimination”.

Mitsuyuki Ikezoe, 86, said he had voted for the LDP because he was “worried that North Korea or Russia might invade Hokkaido in northern Japan”.

But “Ishiba may be rejected by the United States because he is new”, and if Donald Trump becomes president again, “he will not give Ishiba the time of day”, Ikezoe said.