Japan voted on Sunday in its tightest election in years, with new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his stalwart Liberal Democratic Party facing possibly their worst result since 2009.
Opinion polls show the conservative LDP and its junior coalition partner risk falling short of a majority, which could result in a blow to Ishiba.
The 67-year-old former defense minister took office and announced a snap election after being elected by a slim margin last month to lead the LDP, which has ruled almost all of Japan for the past seven decades.
But voters in the world’s fourth-largest economy are troubled by rising prices and the fallout from the party slush fund scandal that helped sink previous Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“I made my decision first by looking at his economic policies and measures to reduce inflation,” voter Yoshihiro Uchida, 48, of Tokyo, told AFP on Sunday. “I vote for people who can make our lives better.”
Ishiba has promised to address the “quiet emergency” of Japan’s declining population through revitalizing depressed rural areas and family-friendly measures such as flexible working hours.
But he has walked back his stance on issues including allowing married couples to have different surnames. He included only two women ministers in his cabinet.
The self-proclaimed security policy “geek” has supported the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, although he warned that it “will not happen overnight”.
Multiple polls in 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 set this threshold as his objective, and missing it would weaken his position in the LDP and would mean finding other coalition partners or leading a minority government.
“We want to start afresh as a fair, impartial and honest party and seek your mandate,” Ishiba said at a rally on Saturday.
LDP’s ‘alternative’
Local media speculated that Ishiba could potentially even resign immediately to take up the responsibility, and would become 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 more than British leader Liz Truss in 2022 – just after Japan’s 1945 defeat in World War II.
In many districts, LDP candidates are in a tight race 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 those who give them huge amounts of cash,” Noda, 67, told his supporters on Saturday.
He accused the government of offering inadequate assistance to earthquake survivors in central Japan, saying, “But those who are in vulnerable situations… have been ignored.”
Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, told AFP that Noda’s stance “is similar to that of the LDP. He is basically a conservative.”
“CDP or Noda can be an alternative to LDP. Many voters think so,” Kamikubo said.
Ishiba has promised not to actively support candidates standing in the election, despite being embroiled in a funding scandal.
“I want to focus on younger candidates rather than those who have had long careers, because they can bring something different,” said a 63-year-old voter who gave her surname as Taniyama. ,
Mitsuyuki Ikezo, 86, said he voted for the LDP because he was “worried that North Korea or Russia might invade Hokkaido in northern Japan”.
But “Ishiba may be treated dismissively by the United States because he is new”, and if Donald Trump becomes president again, “he will not give Ishiba the time of day,” Ikezo said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
