Wounded by months of financial scandals, a cost-of-living crisis and unpopular leaders, few could expect the end of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for the past seven decades.
The Oct. 27 election will come a year earlier than many expected following the surprise resignation of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, historically low approval ratings and public anger over his party's apparent subservience to “monetary policy.”
His successor, Shigeru Ishiba, was chosen last month by party parliamentarians and rank-and-file members to revive the LDP's fortunes and douse the flames of a turf war in which Ishiba narrowly faced a challenge from the party's right.
However, even in times of political turmoil, polls suggest that many believe the party will go into elections to the 465-seat lower house, with reasonable hopes of a fifth consecutive term.
Some polls showed that the LDP would maintain its majority. A Kyodo news agency poll last weekend put the LTP at 26.4%, with the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, leading with 12.4%.
However, a new Nikkei poll suggests the party may fail to win a majority, a result the business newspaper says will “set the stage for political upheaval not seen since 2009,” when the party last suffered a narrow defeat. . House Election.
The LDP aims to retain at least 233 seats to secure an absolute majority, a modest ambition given its current total of 256 seats.
A PM under pressure
The party's dominance of the postwar Japanese political landscape was far from absolute. In 2009, voters toppled the LDP in a surprise decision under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (TPJ). For once, the traditionally fragmented opposition had reached a level of unity that made the DPJ a serious electoral prospect.
Analysts attributed the DPJ victory to the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, a growing income gap, a damaging scandal over millions of pension records and the loss of the LDP's deeply unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso. More than 16%.
However, LTP's time in the desert was short-lived. Hatoyama lasted less than a year, ousted after failing to fulfill a campaign promise to reduce the U.S. military burden on the southern island of Okinawa. His two successors fared little better and normal service resumed with the election of an LDP government in late 2012. Shinzo Abe.
Tobias Harris, founder of consultancy Japan Vision, said Ishiba could have difficulty introducing the law if the LDP and Komeito combine to lose enough seats to weaken the coalition's control over key parliamentary groups.
That would “fundamentally undermine his claims to be an electoral asset for the party… and would compromise any attempt to clean up and modernize the party and consolidate it under his leadership,” Harris said.
Ishiba's victory in the LDP leadership race raised hopes that a softer version of the LDP would emerge from the turmoil of recent months. He is widely seen as a moderate alternative to the extreme conservatism of Sane Tagaichi, his main rival.
The soft-spoken, 67-year-old former banker said his favorite hobby is building model airplanes and ships. Same-sex marriages Reigning empresses and the right of married couples to use different surnames: social and cultural changes that her party challenged public opinion.
Ishiba also vowed to take tough action against LDP lawmakers who later plunged the party into a crisis. Revelations used unreported profits from ticket sales to party events as a secret slush fund. Concerns also persist about his party's ties to the corruption-winning Unification Church.
But in an apparent attempt to placate his right-wing opponents within the LDP, Ishiba refrained from becoming prime minister, saying in parliament last week that the ban on married surnames – in which women always take the her husband's name – and same-sex marriages “requires further study.” He declined to comment on Japan's reforms to male-only inheritance laws.
Critics have also accused him of reneging on promises to tackle financial corruption. The LDP will not oppose 12 candidates in the elections even if they are found to have committed serious misconduct. Ishiba has said that if they win, they could return to the LDP party.
A record 314 women will compete for the seats (women MPs currently make up more than a tenth of all members of the Lower House) and the Lower House is not expected to be dramatically different. About 10% of all candidates come from political families, including Ishiba, who “inherited” his father's former seat in rural Tottori prefecture in 1986.
