Japanese leader’s rule seen shaken by Tokyo election loss
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s scandal-laden ruling party scrambled Monday to control damage from an embarrassing defeat in Tokyo municipal elections, but experts said the stunning result could mean the beginning of the end to Abe’s long reign.
Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party suffered a thumping loss in the assembly elections Sunday, taking a beating for recent scandals and a high-handed approach in achieving policies, while maverick Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s new party surged to victory on her reformist image.
Koike’s party and its allies secured a comfortable majority, winning a total of 79 of the assembly’s 127 seats. But the city branch of Abe’s LDP won just 23 seats, its worst-ever showing in the assembly, and down from its pre-election share of 57 seats.
Experts said voters had sent a message to Abe and his party for their perceived arrogance.
“The results were a punishment by voters who were frustrated by the recent development in the LDP, ” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior research fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Whether Abe can stay on and achieve his long-cherished revision to Japan’s war-renouncing constitution hinges on his “damage control, ” Watanabe said.
Sunday’s vote was closely monitored because previous Tokyo assembly elections have set the tone for subsequent national polls. The 2009 assembly election, in which the LDP won just 38 seats, was followed later that year by the party’s defeat in a national election that forced it from power.
