He jumped before he was pushed. It is the season for it, as parliaments return from their summer recess. Japan’s prime minister Shigeru Ishiba has resigned, recognising the inevitability that his short year-long term is no longer sustainable.
Had he not stepped down, Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) colleagues were expected to vote him out at a meeting yesterday, triggering a party election to lead the minority government. Ostensibly his fall from grace was the party’s disastrous loss of an upper house by-election in July.
However, this defeat reflected a wider, popular disillusionment with the LDP over inflation and immigration which has led to sharp gains for the populist far-right, notably among young people. The government has also been damaged by a political funding scandal and an ongoing rice shortage
“If the LDP remains the same without any change, there will be no tomorrow for the party if that is how people see us,’’ Ishiba admitted on Sunday. “We have to reform the party. I hope this is the first step in that direction”.
RM Block
The party’s problems, and the country’s, are domestic and international. China’s threats to Taiwan and the region has led its diplomats to warn Japanese companies in Taiwan that they are on their own if Beijing invades, a measure of how little confidence Tokyo has in US president Donald Trump’s regional security assurances. The US has just arm-twisted Japan into a tariff deal, requiring massive investment in the US.
Ishiba’s rival for the premiership last year, Sanae Takaichi, a staunch conservative likely to pitch for the job again, rejects the “broad church” aspirations of moderates in the divided party, which has ruled almost continuously since 1955. She has also called for amending Japan’s post-war constitution to allow it to possess a “national defence force,” a stance popular with the nationalist right.
Whoever gets the job, however, will find the LDP’s minority status makes governing difficult. As in many other countries, its centrist majority has been eaten away, creating uncertainty and potential instability.
