Tokyo, July 11: Voters in Japan have been casting their ballots in a parliamentary election seen as a crucial test for the country’s prime minister after just a month in office.
Opinion polls have forecast that Naoto Kan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will likely lose seats in the 242-member upper house of the Japanese parliament, where half the seats are up for grabs.
The result of Sunday’s vote will not directly affect the DPJ’s grip on power because it has a majority in the more powerful lower house.
But a weak showing will undermine the party’s ability to pass legislation, force it to find new coalition partners and could strike a fatal blow to Kan’s leadership barely a month after he became Japan’s fifth prime minister in four years.
Polling stations close at 8:00 pm (1100 GMT), with media exit polls expected immediately afterwards.
Final results are expected late on Sunday night.
Landslide
The DPJ won a landslide victory in a general election last September, ending more than five decades of almost unbroken conservative rule promising to cut waste and focus spending on consumers.
But it has failed to live up to many Japanese hopes for change and Kan’s own ratings have slumped after he floated plans to increase Japan’s sales tax and failed to convince voters he had a clear plan for fixing the country’s economic problems.
“Kan has really nosedived. He took office with about a 60 per cent popularity rating and now that’s down to about 40 per cent,” Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian Studies at Tokyo’s Temple University, told Al Jazeera.
“So it’s really a question of how bad the blood-letting is going to be.”
Kan has made tackling Japan’s massive public debt a cornerstone of his administration, but a loss of the DPJ’s upper house majority would be a major setback to those efforts.
In an effort to avert any losses in the last days of campaigning he has backtracked on talk of tax rises, urging voters not to punish the DPJ and give the party time to make an impact.
“Please give us not just fragile leadership but power to take action,” he told voters at one of his last campaign rallies.
“Even a great man can’t make things happen in only a year. Gritting my teeth, I want to maintain power for at least five years.”
Deadlock
The DPJ needs to retain its majority in the upper house to avoid policy deadlock and begin taking steps to reduce a public debt already about twice the size of the nearly $5trn economy – the worst among advanced countries.
Surveys in several leading Japanese newspapers have forecast the party will likely secure around 50 or fewer of the 121 seats up for grabs in the 242-member upper chamber.
It currently holds 54 of the seats being contested in Sundays vote.
A loss of its majority would force the DPJ and its much smaller coalition partner, the People’s New Party, to seek new allies hampering its ability to push forward with Kan’s fiscal reform drive.
A result of fewer than 50 seats would also leave Kan vulnerable to a leadership challenge from DPJ powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, who has been a vocal critic of Kan’s plans to raise sales tax.
——–Agencies