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.
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