Japan PM to dissolve parliament for ‘honeymoon’ snap election

New PM Shigeru Ishiba wants to shore up his mandate to push through policies that include beefing up spending on defence.

Japan's new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba delivers his inaugural policy address in the lower house of parliament last week. Picture: AFP

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was set to dissolve parliament on Wednesday ahead of October 27 snap elections, banking on his political honeymoon and a fragmented opposition to lead his scandal-tainted party to victory.

Mr Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for decades — albeit with frequent leader changes — and is almost certain to be re-elected.

But Mr Ishiba, named prime minister just last week, wants to shore up his mandate to push through policies that include beefing up spending on defence as well as on poorer regions hit hard by Japan’s demographic crisis.

On Wednesday, his new cabinet approved the dissolving of parliament, local media said, which was due to take place in the afternoon.

The three-year government of Mr Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida suffered record-low approval ratings due to a slush fund scandal and voter discontent over rising prices.

Polls last week gave Mr Ishiba’s cabinet approval ratings of 45-50 per cent compared with 20-30 per cent for the Kishida administration’s final month.

Ishiba’s backers hope the self-confessed defence “geek” and outspoken critic of the LDP establishment will boost the party’s popularity, including by persuading young people to vote.

By dissolving parliament now, the 67-year-old wants to put his party to the test before his “honeymoon” period ends, said Yu Uchiyama, a political science professor at the University of Tokyo. “It makes sense that he wanted to call a snap election as soon as the ‘face’ of the party changed, while the momentum is still there”, he said.

Professor Uchiyama added that Ishiba also wanted to catch opposition forces flat-footed as the LDP’s foes remain undecided about how to coordinate with each other in the election.

But the Prime Minister’s decision to call a snap election this early was also criticised for contradicting his previous vows to prioritise facing the opposition at parliament.

Some voters saw it as a disappointing sign that he had “yielded to the pressure within his party” to dissolve parliament for political gain, Uchiyama said.

Over the weekend, Mr Ishiba announced that the LDP would not endorse some disgraced party members implicated in the political funding scandal in the election. The announcement reflected his desire to demonstrate to the public that he can be “strict” and “likely regained public trust in him a bit”, Professor Uchiyama said.

To counter China, Mr Ishiba has backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO, although he admitted on Monday it would “not happen overnight”.

He said the security environment in Asia was “the most severe since the end of World War II”, and warned in his first policy speech Friday that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia”.

Japan is also facing a looming demographic crisis as its population ages and the birth rate stays stubbornly low — a situation Ishiba called a “quiet emergency” on Friday.

He said his government would promote measures to support families such as flexible working hours.

Mr Ishiba has also pledged to “ensure Japan’s economy emerges from deflation”, and wants to boost incomes through a new stimulus package as well as support for local governments and low-income households.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, meanwhile, seeks to differentiate itself from the LDP on a range of diversity issues, including vowing to legalise same-sex marriages. It also pledges to allow married couples to maintain separate surnames.