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| Shinzo Abe: Japan's Prime Minister waves to a crowd of onlookers during a visit to the Gunma Prefecture, which was damaged by heavy rain.
Japan's ruling camp could lose a July 29 upper house election. Kyodo/Reuters |
Japan's Abe faces uphill battle in parliamentary vote
Japan's ruling party is likely to see big losses in the Upper House elections on Sunday.
By Takehiko Kambayashi | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 25, 2007 edition
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When Shinzo Abe took over the post of Japanese Prime Minister last September from his popular predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, he walked into office with an approval rating of 70 percent.
But when voters go to the polls for the Upper House elections on Sunday, analysts predict that they will punish Mr. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner for a spate of scandals among top cabinet officials and his cabinet ministers' recent series of personal gaffes. The election, pollsters say, will function as a referendum on Abe, whose approval rating has plummeted to 30 percent after only 10 months in office, according to the latest poll by the major daily Asahi Shimbun.
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Regardless of the election results, Abe is likely to remain as Japanese premier because only the Lower House has the power to choose the Prime Minister. However, a voter backlash against the government will make it more difficult for Abe to continue his agenda of liberal economic reform and his efforts to institute patriotic changes to the national education system.
As the youngest postwar prime minister and the first born after World War II, Abe became popular because of his tough stance against North Korea. Abe is a strong advocate for revising the pacifist Constitution to expand Japan's global military presence and wanted to make constitutional changes a campaign issue in the upcoming elections.
Unlike his predecessor, the prime minister at first seemed poised to improve relations with China and South Korea while also pursuing a more nationalistic position at home, especially with regard to education and defense.
"Abe's intention was to write new patriotic themes in education," says Robert Pekkanen, assistant professor of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. But "nobody is interested in that, especially nonaffiliated voters. It has been a complete failure."
But for Japanese voters, Abe's worst failings came with his domestic policy. The public was infuriated when they learned the Social Insurance Agency had lost records related to about 50 million pension cases.
Abe conceded he was aware of the problems by late last year – long before the government finally responded to them at the end of May. But when members of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) grilled Abe about the pension problems before they were revealed publicly, Abe dismissed them by saying the DPJ was "just fueling the fears of the public."
"Abe mishandled it. This is a huge problem for him," says Mr. Pekkanen.
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