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Japan’s Kishida suffers fresh setback as his ruling party loses special election

  • The Liberal Democratic Party lost an upper house seat on the island of Shikoku and only narrowly won a lower house seat in Nagasaki prefecture
  • Any further signs of weakness could put Kishida’s job as party leader under threat and mean he faces difficulties controlling powerful factions

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets reporters in Tokyo on Monday, a day after his Liberal Democratic Party lost one of two seats up for grabs in parliamentary by-elections. Photo: Kyodo
Bloomberg
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost a special election over the weekend and barely scraped out a victory in another, in a fresh setback for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose public support has sagged to its lowest since he took office.

The LDP lost an upper house seat on the island of Shikoku to Hajime Hirota of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, according to exit polling by public broadcaster NHK and other media outlets.

The LDP’s Yozo Kaneko, the son of a former agriculture minister, narrowly won a lower house seat in the southwestern prefecture of Nagasaki. Both constituencies were previously held by the ruling party.

Kishida makes a stump speech in Saikai, Nagasaki prefecture on October 15. His party narrowly won a lower house seat in the prefecture on Sunday. Photo: Kyodo
Kishida makes a stump speech in Saikai, Nagasaki prefecture on October 15. His party narrowly won a lower house seat in the prefecture on Sunday. Photo: Kyodo

The two votes came days after Kishida ordered ruling party executives to consider introducing temporary income tax cuts to help the public deal with rising prices. He underscored that message in a policy speech to parliament later in the day.

While Kishida doesn’t need to hold a general election until 2025, any further signs of weakness could mean he faces difficulties controlling the powerful factions within his party, and his job as LDP leader could be under threat in a vote less than a year away.

Support for Kishida’s cabinet slumped to 29 per cent from 37 per cent in September in a poll carried out by the Asahi newspaper on October 14-15, marking the lowest level since he took office two years ago.

Surveys show voters are dissatisfied with steps he’s taken to shield them from inflation. Those measures include expanding and extending petrol subsidies to the end of the year.

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