Japan’s prime minister is on thinning ice with voters, who expressed growing discontent in a new poll and rejected the ruling party’s candidate in a key local election this weekend.
Public support for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Cabinet has tumbled to 37 percent amid escalating anger over fundraising scandals, according to the national poll by the Asahi Shimbun. Voter approval was down 11 percentage points from 48 percent in December.
More than half said they did not want the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to win a majority of upper house seats in elections this summer.
The latest figures represent a massive reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who came to power on high hopes for change and strong public support. In a historic election last summer, they managed to oust the Liberal Democrats from five decades of nearly unbroken rule.
Since then, however, voters have turned on Hatoyama.
The 63-year-old’s agenda is being undermined by financial scandals that threaten his party’s prospects in July’s upper house elections and its ability to pass a record US$1 trillion budget for the next fiscal year. Hatoyama also faces ballooning doubts about his leadership in diplomatic and economic issues.
More than 80 percent of poll respondents said Ichiro Ozawa, the Democrats’ No. 2 official, should answer lawmakers’ questions regarding a political fundraising scandal. Three former and current aides were indicted earlier this month on charges of violating campaign finance laws.
A revered election strategist, Ozawa is credited with engineering his party’s landslide victory last year and wields considerable power within his party. He has denied any wrongdoing, but voters appear to be unsatisfied.
On Sunday voters in the far western prefecture of Nagasaki elected Hodo Nakamura as their new governor, spurning the Democrats’ choice, Tsuyoshi Hashimoto.
Hatoyama acknowledged the “question of politics and money” influenced the Nagasaki election.
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
RSS