apanese Cabinet ministers said yesterday the time was not right for high-risk snap elections, with reports saying Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso would hold off until next year amid the global financial turmoil.
The opposition, which has been rising in the polls, has demanded that Aso dissolve the lower house of parliament for elections as soon as next month and threatened to stall bills in parliament if he does not.
But Japanese media, quoting unnamed political sources, said Aso has opted not to call an election for now and to focus on stimulus measures and fighting the global slowdown which is seen pushing Japan into recession.
Cabinet ministers welcomed the receding prospects of snap polls.
“I don’t think that people feel it’s the time for elections with stocks and the economy plunging,” Education Minister Ryu Shionoya told reporters.
Aso reportedly told a meeting of lawmakers late on Monday that Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, should avoid a leadership vacuum just as the US, the biggest, is in transition between presidents.
“Major economic powers should be ganging up to stem the string of worries,” said Akira Amari, the minister in charge of administrative reforms.
“I believe the decision to give top priority to people’s lives rather than to political affairs is right,” Amari told reporters.
Seiko Noda, the Cabinet minister in charge of consumer affairs, said that the financial turmoil was “engulfing the world” and “all countries are saying this is a once-in-a-century event.”
“Can Japan, as a member of the world, dissolve [the lower house for elections] ... and say nobody is in charge here?” she said to reporters.
Aso was expected to state his intentions publicly tomorrow after meeting his coalition partner.
A survey published in the Asahi Shimbun yesterday found 57 percent of respondents saw no need to hold elections soon, against 33 percent who wanted early polls.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei stock index this week plunged to its lowest level since 1982, before the collapse of the bubble economy, as a soaring yen saps profits from Japanese exporters.
The banking sector, however, has been relatively unscathed compared with Western counterparts pummeled by risky subprime housing loans.
“Japan has been left relatively unscathed by the crisis and should take the initiative to resolve it,” Aso said at Monday’s meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
Aso took over on Sept. 24 with a mission to steer the party into elections, which must take place by September next year. But his early poll ratings have underwhelmed as the economy falters and the LDP reels from scandals.
The LDP has been in power for all but 10 months since 1955. But the party has been through four prime ministers since 2006 as it struggles to find a popular leader.
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