Japan’s prime minister is on thinning ice with voters, who expressed growing discontent in a new poll and rejected the ruling party’s candidate in a key local election this weekend.
Public support for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Cabinet has tumbled to 37 percent amid escalating anger over fundraising scandals, according to the national poll by the Asahi Shimbun. Voter approval was down 11 percentage points from 48 percent in December.
More than half said they did not want the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to win a majority of upper house seats in elections this summer.
The latest figures represent a massive reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who came to power on high hopes for change and strong public support. In a historic election last summer, they managed to oust the Liberal Democrats from five decades of nearly unbroken rule.
Since then, however, voters have turned on Hatoyama.
The 63-year-old’s agenda is being undermined by financial scandals that threaten his party’s prospects in July’s upper house elections and its ability to pass a record US$1 trillion budget for the next fiscal year. Hatoyama also faces ballooning doubts about his leadership in diplomatic and economic issues.
More than 80 percent of poll respondents said Ichiro Ozawa, the Democrats’ No. 2 official, should answer lawmakers’ questions regarding a political fundraising scandal. Three former and current aides were indicted earlier this month on charges of violating campaign finance laws.
A revered election strategist, Ozawa is credited with engineering his party’s landslide victory last year and wields considerable power within his party. He has denied any wrongdoing, but voters appear to be unsatisfied.
On Sunday voters in the far western prefecture of Nagasaki elected Hodo Nakamura as their new governor, spurning the Democrats’ choice, Tsuyoshi Hashimoto.
Hatoyama acknowledged the “question of politics and money” influenced the Nagasaki election.
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