According to a new poll, 79% of Japanese disapprove of the current Japanese government, the highest level since 1947. The reason may be the funding scandal that has hit the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
In a poll commissioned by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, 16% of respondents approve of the actions of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government. This is the lowest level since 2011, when support for the government of then centrist Democratic Party Prime Minister Naoto Kan fell to 15% following the Fukushima disaster.
At the same time, the percentage of voters publicly dissatisfied with the government is the highest in the history of polls commissioned by Mainich: 79% of respondents are dissatisfied with the government’s work. The newspaper began polling government support in 1947, and the percentage of people dissatisfied with the government has never been higher. The highest dissatisfaction rate so far was recorded in 2001, when 75 percent of Japanese were dissatisfied with the government of then LDP Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
Support for the LDP also fell to 17% from 24% in November, the lowest since the party returned to power in 2012.
The main opposition party, the centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party (CDPJ), is supported by 14% of voters, which is five percentage points more than in the previous poll.
The right-wing opposition party Japan Innovation Party (JIP) is supported by 13% of voters, the left-wing populist opposition party Reiwa Shinsengumi by 7% of voters, the opposition Communist Party by 5% of voters, and the opposition Center Right-wing Popular Democrat with 4% of voters.
The LDP’s only coalition partner, Komeito, a party with a Buddhist religious background, is supported by only 3% of voters, while the share of non-preferential voters increased by five percentage points to 31%.
This is bad news for Kishida, who became leader of the LDP in September 2021 and won a majority in the lower house of parliament in the general election just a month later. Kishida began his term by promising to build a “new capitalism” and improve Japanese people’s incomes, but just months after becoming prime minister, the country was hit by an energy crisis following Russia’s large-scale incursion in Ukraine. According to the latest data, the Japanese economy is in decline and wage growth is lagging behind inflation.
In addition to the poor state of the economy and the unpopular fiscal package, the Japanese government has been hit by several scandals in recent months, the largest and most recent of which concerns the financing of the ruling party.
Several weeks ago it was revealed that many factions within the ruling party had organized events to collect donations, in which each MP had their own share. Several MPs, who managed to collect donations from their supporters who exceeded the quota, got their money back from the party that exceeded the quota without declaring it anywhere. For some parliamentarians and ministers, the undeclared donations would have reached millions of yen, or tens of thousands of euros.
As many as 81 percent of respondents to Mainich’s poll considered the allegations “very serious,” and only 13 percent responded that it was not a serious scandal.
Although Prime Minister Kishida has decided to fire four members of the Cabinet of Ministers, 43% of respondents do not consider this step sufficient. Only 8% of respondents said the prime minister did not need to sack ministers.
The sacked ministers belong to the largest faction of the LDP, led until last July by former prime minister Shinzo Abe. According to the prosecution’s suspicions, members of the faction left undeclared donations totaling around 500 million yen (3.2 million euros) over five years. After Abe’s murder, the faction failed to find a new leader but was plagued by various scandals.
Japanese voters do not believe Kishida will be able to tighten rules on political donations: only 9% of those polled believe he would be able to do so, and 82% said no to the question.
Although the next general elections in Japan will have to be held by the fall of 2025, Kishida’s term may end much earlier, as the next LDP leadership elections will be held as early as the fall of 2024. Since the party has the majority in parliament, its leader automatically becomes prime minister. The party’s historically poor rating could lead Kishida to lose the leadership election or give up his candidacy altogether.
2023-12-18 18:35:00
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