Unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga looks increasingly vulnerable to a challenge from within his party for the nation’s top job after an ally’s defeat in a local election on Sunday seen as a referendum on Suga’s COVID-19 response.
If Suga loses, he would join a long list of short-term premiers. He took over in September after Shinzo Abe quit, citing ill health and ending a rare lengthy term of nearly eight years.
Suga, whose term as ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader ends next month, has seen his support slide from highs of about 70 percent to less than 30 percent, with a weekend poll by ANN News putting support at 25.8 percent, as Japan battles an explosive surge of COVID-19 infections.
Photo: AP
Yesterday, domestic media reported that former Japanese minister of foreign affairs Fumio Kishida was likely to run in the LDP’s leadership race.
The defeat of Hachiro Okonogi, son of Suga’s political mentor and a former Cabinet minister, in Yokohama’s mayoral election would most likely amplify calls to replace Suga ahead of a lower house election.
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan candidate Takeharu Yamanaka, a former professor of public health, won by a landslide in Suga’s constituency near Tokyo.
“The LDP is being severely criticized in my constituency, so it’s very hard to fight under Suga,” said a junior LDP lawmaker from a conservative rural district, who declined to be named.
Such views are expected to spread.
“For certain, voices saying they can’t fight the general election under Suga will grow louder,” political analyst Atsuo Ito said. “The chances of multiple candidates [in the LDP race] will increase.”
Still, uncertainty remains. Suga told reporters there was no change in his plan to run in the LDP poll. No party bosses who backed Suga last year have publicly withdrawn support.
“We should not change the ship’s captain in the midst of a storm,” one senior LDP lawmaker said ahead of the mayoral vote.
Scenarios include Suga losing the LDP race to a rival, bowing out early, or winning the party vote and keeping his job if LDP losses in the lower house poll are limited.
Suga’s election track record is not good. Abe led his coalition to victory in six national elections, but Suga has seen defeats in by-elections and a lackluster showing in a Tokyo local poll.
Lower house members’ four-year terms end on Oct. 21. An election for the chamber must be held by Nov. 28, but is expected sooner.
Suga had hoped to contain the virus outbreak and call a general election after a successful Olympics. That scenario was upended after a COVID-19 surge led to a fourth state of emergency in Tokyo.
Alongside Kishida, former Japanese minister of internal affairs and communications Sanae Takaichi, an Abe disciple, has said she wants to run, as has Seiko Noda, another female ex-Cabinet minister. Both are seen as long-shots, as is former Japanese minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology Hakubun Shimomura.
Japanese Minister for Administrative Reform and Regulatory Reform Taro Kono and former Japanese minister of defense Shigeru Ishiba top the list of lawmakers that voters favor as next premier, followed by Japanese Minister of the Environment Shinjiro Koizumi.
Kishida, once seen as Abe’s heir, ranks rock bottom. Abe himself has single-digit percentage support. Prime ministers have sometimes survived poor ratings, but Suga is at particular risk because his term as party president is ending just as a general election looms.
Decisions by party bosses — including Abe, his ally Japanese Minister of Finance Taro Aso and their rival, LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai — matter greatly. Younger lawmakers might be more worried about losing their seats than toeing the party line.
Those MPs “are very uneasy about their own elections. It’s unclear whether they would vote for Suga even if their faction bosses told them to do so,” Ito said.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS