Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba could lose majority in snap vote

Such a defeat would gravely weaken his authority in the party and open the way for a challenge by Sanae Takaichi.

Shigeru Ishiba’s political honeymoon was over as soon as it began. Picture: AFP

Less than a month after taking office, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is in a “fight to the death” to avoid a disastrous election defeat that could leave his ruling party without a parliamentary majority for the first time in 15 years.

Mr Ishiba, 67, became Prime Minister at the beginning of this month after being elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, which held a safe majority in Japan’s Diet. He almost immediately called a snap election to capitalise on what he assumed would be an extended period of popularity.

But his honeymoon period was over almost as soon as it began. Recent polls are predicting that the LDP could lose its majority in Sunday’s election, even with the support of its ­coalition partner, leaving it scrambling for the support of small opposition parties to ­remain in power.

Such a defeat would gravely weaken Mr Ishiba’s authority in the party and open the way for a challenge by Sanae Takaichi, the rival he narrowly beat to the party leadership. She is a right-wing nationalist who seeks to ­become Japan’s first female prime minister. “It’s an extremely tough election,” Mr Ishiba acknowledged in a speech last week. “We are doing it in the face of unprecedented headwinds.”

In a message to party candidates on Monday, he wrote: “We are now facing the critical phase … in this latter half of the campaign, I will run around the country in a fight to the death. I ask each one of you to give your very best efforts so that we can seize victory.”

However serious the crisis, it is one of the LDP’s own making. Apart from brief periods, the party has been in power since 1955. But since the resignation in 2020 of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and his assassination two years later, the LDP has been bogged down by scandals and hobbled by lacklustre leadership.

First, it was the revelation of close relationships between LDP politicians and the Unification Church, regarded as a predatory cult. Then it emerged that senior MPs were receiving campaign funds in excess of legal limits from a secret party slush fund.

Mr Ishiba is an LDP outsider, and an outspoken opponent of Abe and his surviving faction. But since coming to power, he has failed to distinguish himself from his scandal-smeared predecessors. He has retreated from some of his most distinctive commitments, including a plan to create an Asian version of NATO to confront China, which was given the cold shoulder by foreign governments and his own ministers.

The lower house of the Diet has 465 seats and the LDP had a majority of 256, plus 32 held by its coalition partner, the Buddhist party Komeito. Recent polls indicate that even with Komeito’s support it could fall short of a majority of 233. This would force Mr Ishiba to go to even smaller, right-wing parties to cobble ­together a majority.

THE TIMES