Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has risen sharply since he dissolved parliament and called nationwide elections after a key postal reform bill was rejected, newspaper polls showed yesterday.
Koizumi's approval rate rose to 46 percent, up 9 points from an all-time low of 37 percent the previous month, the Mainichi newspaper said. An Asahi newspaper survey also showed a boost in support.
The upper house of parliament on Monday rejected Koizumi's decade-long plan to privatize Japan Post's enormous postal savings account system.
The defeat came with the help of defectors from his own ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
More than half of those polled backed Koizumi's decision to retaliate by dissolving parliament's lower house and to hold Sept. 11 elections for the chamber's 480 seats, according to polls by both the Mainichi and the Yomiuri, another national daily.
The government was encouraged by the poll results.
"I think it shows that the public has a deep understanding of the circumstances that the Cabinet faces, and the government's enthusiasm for future reforms," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda.
Koizumi has said that those LDP members who opposed his reforms would not be endorsed by the party in the upcoming elections.
His decision effectively splits the LDP into two camps and could allow the Democratic Party, Japan's biggest opposition group, to improve its standing and possibly form a ruling coalition. Such an upset would mark only the second time since the LDP's founding in 1955 for a non-LDP bloc to control Japan's government.
But the Mainichi and Asahi polls indicated yesterday that more people continued to back an LDP-dominated government over having the opposition Democrats take power.
The Mainichi said 50 percent wanted to see the LDP retain its hold on government compared to 35 percent supporting the opposition DPJ.
All three national dailies conducted their surveys by telephone in the two days immediately after Koizumi dissolved the lower house.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS