Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba insisted on Monday he would not step down and reached out to potential political allies following the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s resounding defeat in the lower house election.
Analysts were surprised at the scale of the party’s poor performance and said the election outcome on Sunday would be fatal to the fortunes of Ishiba and the LDP. Most of them projected that Ishiba would no longer be in post by the time of upper house elections in July.
Only elected head of the party on October 1, Ishiba could be in office shorter than even former Japanese prime minister and LDP chief Sosuke Uno, according to analysts. Uno was in power for just 68 days in 1989 after revelations of his affair with a geisha forced him to resign.
“All the polls had been indicating that the LDP would lose seats. I estimated they would lose around 30 or so so losing 65 seats was a surprise,” said Go Ito, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Meiji University.
“A defeat on that scale just shows how angry the public has become at the party, and the biggest issue is the LDP members involved in the slush-fund scandal,” Ito told This Week in Asia. He was referring to the scandal that emerged last year and involved 600 million yen (US$4 million) being siphoned off by dozens of politicians and party accountants.
Ishiba was elected party leader mainly because he had not been implicated in any wrongdoing and promised the public that he would hold individual party members accountable for the funding scandal. His promise was undermined just days before the general election, however, when the party was forced to confirm that instead of following through with a commitment to withhold campaign funds for politicians linked to the scandal, it had quietly provided financial support to some of them.
“People were furious that he had gone back on his word and I think that news, immediately before the vote, hurt Ishiba,” Ito said.
The LDP remains the single largest party in the Diet with 191 seats, while its partner Komeito saw its share of seats falling from 32 seats to 24, leaving the coalition short of the 233 seats required for a simple majority. The biggest winner was the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which won 50 seats to bring its total to 148, while the Democratic Party for the People gained 21 seats, leaving it with 28 representatives.
A total of nine parties now have seats in the lower house, most small and with apparently some interest in forming coalitions, meaning that Ishiba might still defy expectations if he were to play his hand well, analysts say.
“He can stay on as head of a minority government and it appears that he is planning to try to pass legislation by forming alliances with individual parties to deal with specific issues,” Ito said. “It will be hard, of course, as many parties have wildly different ideologies and are unwilling to compromise but they could agree to work with the LDP if their ideas are reflected in specific pieces of legislation.”
The fractured opposition would work in Ishiba’s favour, and threats within the LDP against his leadership have largely dissipated, Ito said.
“The right-wing of the party did badly, with many of those politicians linked to the financial scandal,” he said, pointing out that of the 46 LDP members who were punished over the saga, 28 lost their seats. “More significantly, after this result, who in the LDP would want to be prime minister?”
Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, said he was also shocked by the scale of the “bloodbath”, suggesting that Ishiba was on “borrowed time”.
“His popularity was based on his integrity and decisiveness over the financial scandal, but he was quick to back-pedal under pressure from the party and that only made it look like those involved had got a half-hearted slap on the wrist,” he said.
Yet the fractured nature of the opposition meant that Ishiba might limp on although such a scenario would not be an ideal solution, Kingston said.
“These are politicians and there is always a political deal that can be struck, depending on what is on offer,” he said. “Whether a coalition is within reach will depend on what these minor parties are demanding and what the LDP is willing to give in return to parties that are eager for a taste of power.”
The bartering of policy positions would take considerable time, effort and political capital, with advancing key agenda issues impossible for now, Kingston said. Without a compromise among the parties under the LDP coalition, a paralysis in the Diet would erode support for Ishiba further, he added.
“The chances of Ishiba still being party leader going into next July’s elections are slim,” he said. “There will be a dearth of progress on policies and, I fear, a return to a revolving door of leaders.”