Abe’s Party Headed for Big Defeat, Polls Show Rebuke From Voters in Elections Could Force His Resignation

By Norimitsu Onishi

Yasuko Kamiizumi contributed reporting from Yokohama; Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Saitama.

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Early results in Japan’s election in the upper house of Parliament indicated that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party was headed for a crushing defeat that could force him to resign. As soon as the vote ended at 8 p.m., NHK, the public broadcaster, announced that exit polls showed that the main opposition Democratic Party was assured of becoming the biggest party in the upper house.

Under its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, the Democratic Party appeared to have won a landslide victory, winning seats not only in urban areas but also in rural districts that are traditional strongholds of the LDP.

In a devastating rebuke to Abe, voters appeared to have punished him for his mishandling of basic issues and a series of scandals that seemed to leave his government in disarray.

“Last time, I voted for the Liberal Democrats under Koizumi,” Takeshige Iijima, 53, said after voting in Yokohama, referring to the popular former prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. “I can’t support the present Liberal Democratic Party.”

With pre-election polls showing Abe’s approval ratings at about 30 percent and that angry voters were set to turn against his party, LDP leaders had braced themselves for a crippling loss. The only open question focused on whether the margin of defeat would be so large that Abe would have to step down.

Under Japanese law, the lower house of Parliament, which Abe’s party will still control, chooses the prime minister, so a loss in the upper house would not immediately force his resignation. But several of Abe’s predecessors have taken responsibility for defeats in the upper house by resigning.

Abe said last week that he would stay as prime minister regardless of the election outcome. But members of his party – who had selected him last September in the hope that he would lead them to electoral victories the way Koizumi did – may start looking for another leader with more popular support.

Abe’s rapport with the electorate had deteriorated in the months before the election, as he appeared out of touch with voters’ anxieties about bread-and-butter issues, like the economy and national pensions.

Instead, he pursued a nationalist agenda, saying until a few weeks ago that his main priority was to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and repeating his trademark, if vague, promise of turning Japan into “a beautiful country.”

Abe had tried desperately to head off a defeat in the closing days of the campaign, telling skeptical voters that he had heard them and pleading for another chance.

Abe spent Saturday crisscrossing Tokyo, joined for the first time by its popular nationalist governor, Shintaro Ishihara.

“While listening closely to your voices and repenting for the points that I needed to repent, I will change the Liberal Democratic Party into a new party, and I’m determined to make sure that your voices are clearly reflected in our policies,” he said.

In a 12-minute speech on Saturday in the Ikebukuro section of Tokyo, Abe never alluded to the Constitution and mentioned “a beautiful country” only once. He spoke mostly about issues like the economy and the growing income gap.

Abe took out full-page ads in Sunday’s newspapers, pledging to turn voters’ “anger and anxieties” into “peace of mind and hope.” But the change in strategy appears to have come too late.

“Until now I’ve always voted for the Liberal Democratic Party, but this time I voted for Ozawa,” Kazuyoshi Tobita, a restaurant owner in Saitama, a prefecture next to Tokyo. “There were all sorts of problems. The pension problem was terrible. I mean, what are they thinking?”

The anger against Abe cut across generational lines.

“The pension,” said Jun Ishikawa, 22, when asked about what became the election’s most important issue. “I’m paying into it after all.”

After voting with her husband, Shige Tahara, 60, said she had always supported the Liberal Democrats, but now believed that a two- party system would make politicians more accountable.

“We’ve come all this way with the Liberal Democratic Party, and things keep getting worse,” Tahara said. “So, if another party took power, I’d like to see what kind of policies it would come up with.”

Of the 242 seats in the upper house, half, or 121, were up for grabs in this election. The Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, the New Komeito, had to win a combined 64 seats to maintain a majority in the upper house.

The Democratic Party succeeded in making inroads by emphasizing in recent months voters’ deepening anxieties about the economy and their living standards. Ozawa, a veteran politician famous for his tactical skills, focused on building support in rural areas that have long been bastions of support for the LDP.

Ozawa, a former powerbroker in the LDP, famously left it in 1993 and formed an alliance of opposition parties that toppled the LDP for 11 months – the only time the party has been out of power since its founding in 1955.

(c) 2007 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.