TOKYO: Election campaigning in Japan began in earnest on Tuesday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeking to repel an upstart new party that has pledged to rid the government of cronyism in a challenge to Abe’s near-five year hold on power.
The Oct 22 lower house election pits Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition against the less than one-month-old Party of Hope headed by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, a former LDP lawmaker often floated as a possible first female premier.
Abe says he needs to renew his mandate to tackle a “national crisis” stemming from North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat and the demographic time-bomb of Japan’s fast-ageing population.
The 63-year-old Abe called the poll amid opposition disarray and an uptick in approval ratings that had slid due to a series of scandals over suspected cronyism.
But the sudden emergence of Koike’s party, which also appeals to conservative voters, could upset Abe’s calculation. The main opposition Democratic Party imploded last month and a big chunk of its candidates are running on the Party of Hope ticket.
In his first campaign speech Abe attacked the opposition for using populist slogans. “What creates our future is not a boom or slogan. It is policy that creates our future,” Abe said in Fukushima in northeast Japan. “We just cannot afford to lose.”
The LDP-led coalition is defending a two-thirds “super majority” in parliament’s lower house, so losing its simple majority would be a major upset.
Abe’s LDP had 288 seats in the lower house before it was dissolved for the election, while its junior partner the Komeito had 35.
The total number of seats has been cut to 465 from 475.
Recent opinion polls show the LDP in the lead and some analysts think Abe could still pull off another landslide victory.
A poll of 3,119 voters by public broadcaster NHK released on Tuesday showed 36 per cent had positive expectations for the Party of Hope, down from 47 per cent in a survey a week ago. Support for Abe’s government was unchanged, at 37 per cent. — Reuters
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