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.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS