A fast-growing challenge by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, often floated as the nation’s first possible female prime minister, to Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc has hi
A fast-growing challenge by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, often floated as the nation’s first possible female prime minister, to Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc has highlighted the risk of his gamble on a snap poll as she tries to replicate a historic defeat of his party.
Abe called the Oct. 22 election in the hope his improved ratings and a struggling opposition would help his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition keep its majority in the Lower House, where it now holds a two-thirds supermajority.
But Abe’s bet now looks increasingly shaky, given growing support for Koike’s fledgling Kibo no To (Party of Hope) — launched this week — and the opposition Democratic Party’s move to have its candidates leave the party and run on her ticket.
No general election needed to be held until late 2018.
Abe’s decision has evoked comparison’s to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s move to call a snap election in June, only to see her Conservative Party lose its overall majority, although analysts noted Koike might have become an even bigger threat had Abe waited.
“Abe thought the risk worth taking. Maybe he didn’t anticipate what Koike would do,” said Daniel Sneider, a Stanford University scholar currently doing research in Japan.
The growing momentum of Koike’s party has also revived memories of a 1993 political drama when a coalition led by another reformist governor, Morihiro Hosokawa, ousted the LDP for the first time since its founding four decades earlier.
Clearly, the historical parallels are weighing on Abe’s mind. Abe, Koike and DP leader Seiji Maehara were elected to the Lower House for the first time that year, Koike and Maehara from Hosokawa’s Japan New Party and Abe from the LDP.
