|
Polls batter Japan's PM
25/06/2007 15:51 - (SA)
Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in a fight for his political life a month ahead of key elections, with half of voters hoping for his party's defeat following a barrage of scandals.
The outspoken conservative was hailed when he took over nine months ago for his young image and foreign policy successes. But his popularity has since plummeted, with many voters now seeing him not as youthful, just inexperienced.
In the latest poll out Monday, 49% of voters wanted Abe's coalition to lose its majority in the July 29 election, surpassing the 35% who hoped the ruling bloc would keep it, the Nikkei economic daily said.
Even Hidenao Nakagawa, secretary general of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), admitted: "Right now it's as if the Abe government is going downhill.
"We must change the tide," Nakagawa told supporters on Saturday.
Abe's poll ratings nosedived after a government agency admitted it misplaced millions of payments to the pension system, a sensitive issue in the rapidly ageing country.
In a bid to take responsibility for the pension scandal, Abe will return 2.34 million yen of his customary summer bonus to national coffers, the government said on Monday.
Next month's election is for only the upper house of parliament and a defeat would not automatically cost Abe his job, as the LDP-led coalition enjoys an overwhelming majority in the more powerful lower house.
But a defeat would likely lead to calls within the LDP for Abe to quit.
It is Abe's first nationwide test since succeeding veteran leader Junichiro Koizumi in September.
"It is hard to imagine that the trend is going to be reversed unless something astonishing happens," said Takayoshi Shibata, professor emeritus of Tokyo Keizai University.
"Mr Abe is trying to act like Mr Koizumi," Shibata said. "But he is just a well-bred kid who doesn't know what to do."
Koizumi led his party to a historic victory in the 2005 election by declaring he would stake his political life on privatising the mammoth post office and dramatising the polls by fielding high-profile candidates.
Abe, Japan's first premier born after World War II and grandson of a former prime minister, has put a priority on shaking off legacies of defeat including rewriting the US-imposed 1947 constitution. But he has since changed emphasis after the scandals.
"He calls for revising the constitution, which is about what the state should be like, and then talks about pensions, which is about civil society. He is inconsistent," Shibata said.
At 52, Abe is Japan's youngest post-war leader and has battled perceptions about his authority following scandals involving top aides, most dramatically his farm minister who hanged himself amid accusations of corruption.
Abe has made achievements on the diplomatic front, succeeding in repairing relations with China and South Korea that were tense under Koizumi due to issues linked to wartime history.
- AFP
|
News
