Japan’s train-loving prime minister struggles to keep LDP on track

Japan has begun campaigning for a snap general election that threatens to topple the ruling Liberal Democratic Party as voters judge a fund scandal, rising cost of living and a decade-long failure to deliver greater prosperity in homes

The intense 12-day campaign season for a vote to be held on October 27 was formally launched by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the quirky 67-year-old LDP veteran who was elevated to the job two years ago weeks after a bitter long. divisive party leadership race.

Facing off against Ishiba is a fragmented lineup of five main opposition parties, with no strong inclination to join forces. The largest is the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, a splinter bloc led by veteran parliamentarian and former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, 67.

While the LDP is still likely to win a majority, it may emerge substantially weakened and less able to deal with the economic and demographic challenges facing Tokyo.

Japan is trying to normalize its economy after decades of deflation and very loose monetary policy, while its working population has to support an ever-increasing number of retirees.

Ishiba’s success can be defined by the few seats he loses at a time when the LDP is held in low esteem.

“Ishiba can afford up to 20 losses, especially if they are concentrated among lawmakers involved in a scandal, but more than that will affect his ability to govern,” said Tobias Harris, founder of political risk advisory firm Japan Foresight. .

Despite his image as a man of integrity, Ishiba came to power with a cabinet approval rating of 51 percent, the lowest since the rating began in 2002. In the first negotiating session after Ishiba emerged as Japan’s next prime minister, Tokyo stocks fell sharply. while the yen traded strongly as markets bet on whether it would pressure the Bank of Japan to delay raising interest rates.

This lack of market confidence is based on Ishiba’s attempt to present himself as a revitalizer of the Japanese economy.

As Mizuho equity strategist Masatoshi Kikuchi noted, while the economic context for many previous elections has been poor, Japan’s long experience with falling or stagnant prices meant that the “index of misery”, a calculation that adds the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, would not have been much of a problem. Now, with rising prices and anemic increases in real wages, the poverty rate is approaching 6%.

Given the long shadow cast by the political financing scandal and the state of the economy, the LDP is, in theory, due to a strong voter scandal, said Temple University political scientist Jeff Kingston.

But, he added, the speed with which the general elections have been called has given the opposition parties very little time to coordinate effectively.

Meanwhile, Noda has so far failed to establish a distinctive economic program or give voters a clear set of political reasons to choose his party, repeating the mantra that Japan should vote out the long-standing LDP and allow the Japanese political space to change.

“There are many reasons why the LDP should suffer, but the fragmented state of the opposition is what could save them. I’m not sure Noda is the man to lead the CDPJ into a bright future,” said Kingston, who added that voters had probably not forgiven the party for its brief but chaotic period in power from 2009 to 2012

Still, the risks of significant disruption are there, other analysts say. Ishiba’s LDP party, in power more or less continuously since 1955 except for two brief interludes, remains deeply divided after the leadership election and Ishiba has done little to build unity.

The balance of power in the House of Representatives, where the LDP controlled 255 of the 465 seats before parliament was dissolved, means that losing a couple of dozen seats would deprive Ishiba of an absolute majority and give him greater influence to the powerful enemies of his own party.

The LDP has also governed, for many years, in coalition with the 32-seat but weakening Komeito party and a handful of independents. If the coalition loses more than 46 seats, Harris noted, it will fall short of the “stable majority” of 244 seats that allows it to chair and hold a majority of seats on every parliamentary committee.

While Ishiba — a train enthusiast and Japanese encourage a fan obsessed with defense issues: He had personal popularity, he was not the “charismatic savior” the LDP needed, a party official said.

But Harris added that there was a good chance that independent voters, especially younger ones, could reject the choice between the two 67-year-old political veterans and abstain from this election. This could mean the election is decided by grassroots LDP supporters, who tend to like Ishiba and will leave the LDP majority intact.

“It seems likely that the LDP will lose quite a few votes, but it is unclear how large its seat loss would be given that more voters may simply abstain and also split votes between opposition parties,” he said Koichi Nakano, political scientist and affiliate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

“If there was a real two-party system. . . The LDP would almost certainly lose power, but given voter disaffection and the fragmentation of the opposition, the LDP can still weather the storm.”

Data visualization by Jonathan Vincent