Japanese are voting today in parliamentary elections. Polling stations in the far eastern country have opened and the battle for the vote is expected to be one of the most contested in years. It is possible that the new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will achieve their worst results since 2009, BTA reported.
According to opinion polls, the conservative LDP and its smaller governing coalition partner are in danger of losing their majority in what could be a disastrous defeat for Ishiba.
The 67-year-old former defense minister took office as prime minister and triggered snap elections after narrowly winning the race for the chairmanship of the LDP, which has ruled Japan almost unchanged for nearly 70 years.
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But voters in the world's fourth-largest economy are unhappy with high prices and a party-funding scandal that ousted previous Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
"We want to start clean as a fair, honest and sincere party and ask for your trust,", Ishiba told supporters at a campaign rally yesterday.
He promised to revive economically depressed rural areas and solve the "quiet emergency" Japan is in due to an aging population. The remedy that the prime minister offers to deal with the demographic crisis is a more gentle state policy towards families, such as the introduction of flexible working hours.
Ishiba became internationally known for proposing the creation of a NATO-like regional military alliance as a counterweight to China, though he later hedged cautiously with the caveat that this could not happen "overnight".
According to research from Friday commissioned by the daily "Yomuri Shimbun" LDP and its coalition partner "Komeito" ("Clean Politics Party") may struggle to secure the 233 seats they need in the lower house for a parliamentary majority.
Ishiba has declared overcoming that threshold as his election goal, meaning that failure to meet it will undermine his standing in the LDP and force him to seek more coalition partners or govern with a minority cabinet.
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Local media have speculated that the prime minister may even resign immediately to take political responsibility and thus become the shortest-serving prime minister in Japan's post-war history.
The current record is held by Naruhiko Higashikuni, who ruled for 54 days - four more than British leader Liz Truss in 2022 - in the period immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945.
"The situation is extremely difficult," Ishiba said, according to local media, from the podium during the pre-election demonstration yesterday.
In many constituencies, LDP candidates are tied with their rivals from the Constitutional Democratic Party (KDP) - the second largest political force in parliament - led by the popular former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda.
"The politics of the LDP is only to please those who give them loads of money,", Noda also told supporters yesterday. "And the vulnerable, those who cannot give money, are neglected."
Noda's views "are not fundamentally different from those of the LDP." In fact, he is a conservative," Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, told AFP.
"KDP and Noda can be an alternative to LDP. Most voters are of this opinion," Kamikubo said.
Ishiba promised not to actively intervene in the campaign in support of individual LDP candidates despite the scandal surrounding party funding.
Hitomi Hisano, a swing voter from Aichi Prefecture in central Japan, told AFP that the black money scandal was an important circumstance for him.
"The LDP has been in power for too long. "I notice arrogance," the 69-year-old said. "Part of me wants to punish them."
"But there are no other parties that are credible enough to win my vote."