Japanese PM promises ‘fundamental reforms’ after losing majority

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba promised this Monday to initiate “fundamental reforms” within the right-wing conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which lost its majority in the Lower House of Parliament after Sunday’s general elections.

“I will initiate fundamental reforms in financing and policy,” Ishiba told reporters.

The head of the PDL campaign resigned This Monday, after the defeat, a party leader confirmed to the France-Presse news agency.

“As an election official, I have submitted my letter of resignation” to Prime Minister and party president Shigeru Ishiba “to take responsibility for the result and [a demissão] It was accepted,” said Shinjiro Koizumi, quoted by Japanese television Fuji TV.

Ishiba attributed the electoral defeat to “suspicion, distrust and anger” among voters following the financial scandal that rocked the PDL.

“The most important factor is the suspicion, mistrust and anger that have not disappeared regarding the problem of financing and politics”the prime minister told reporters.

The financial scandal, which had already contributed to the unpopularity of the previous prime minister, Fumio Kishida, led the LDP to punish several dozen members for not having declared the equivalent of several million eurosraised through the sale of tickets to fundraising nights.

Shigeru Ishiba assured this Monday that intends to remain in office despite electoral defeatindicating that he has no intention of creating a “political vacuum.”

“I want to do my duty, which is to protect people’s lives, to protect Japan,” the prime minister insisted.

Hours earlier, Ishiba had already acknowledged to public broadcaster NHK that the party received a “harsh judgment” from voters.

According to projections based on exit polls, the PDL coalition with its ally Komeito should not obtain an absolute majority.

At the end of a campaign in which it suffered from high inflation in Japan and the consequences of a financial scandal, the PDL would have obtained between 153 and 219 seats, according to first projections. This figure is much lower than the absolute majority of 233 seats, out of a total of 465.

Without an absolute majority with its coalition partner, the PDL will have to find other allies or form a precarious minority government, as the opposition remains too fragmented to propose an alternative.

This result will be practically unprecedented in the history of the PDL, which managed to remain in power almost uninterruptedly since 1955.

Ishiba, 67, who became prime minister on Oct. 1, had called early elections, promising voters “a new Japan,” with a program to strengthen security and defense, increase support for families with low income and revitalize the Japanese rural world.