Japan elections: Incumbent PM Shinzo Abe appears headed to victory

Japanese voters may not love Abe, but they appear to want to stick with what they know, rather than hand the reins to an opposition with little or no track record.

Tokyo, October 21: Media polls indicate Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition will handily win a general election, likely to retain its two-thirds majority in the more powerful lower house of parliament. Japan's leader may have made the right call after all, if not for his country than for himself.

Japanese voters may not love Abe, but they appear to want to stick with what they know, rather than hand the reins to an opposition with little or no track record.

Uncertainty over North Korea and its growing missile and nuclear arsenal may be heightening that underlying conservatism.

"I buy into Prime Minister Abe's ability to handle diplomacy," said Naomi Mochida, a 51-year-old woman listening to Abe campaign earlier this week in Saitama prefecture, outside of Tokyo.

"I think the most serious threat we face now is the North Korea situation. I feel Prime Minister Abe has been showing the best tactics to handle the situation, compared to other politicians including past prime ministers."

Abe dissolved the lower house a little more than three weeks ago on the day it convened for a special session, forcing the snap election.

The timing seemed ripe for his ruling Liberal-Democratic Party, or at least better than waiting. Support for Abe's Cabinet, the standard measure of a government's popularity in Japan, had bounced back from summertime lows.

The main opposition force, the Democratic Party, was in more disarray than usual after its leader had resigned. Holding off would only give a potential rival, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, more time to organise a challenge.

The election is "mainly about the Abe administration trying to lock in its position ... and with success, get Prime Minister Abe re-elected as president of the LDP in September and rule until after the Tokyo Olympics, until 2021," Michael Green, a Japan expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, said on a call with journalists. Koike, her hand forced by Abe's decision, hastily launched a new party to contest the election.

Her Party of Hope briefly stole the limelight from Abe, attracting a slew of defectors from the Democrats.

Its populist platform includes phasing out nuclear power by 2030, and putting on hold an increase in the consumption tax due in 2019. But Abe's gambit appears to be paying off.

The initial excitement for the Party of Hope has waned. Koike, the party leader, decided not to run for the 465-seat lower house and won't even be in Japan on election day.

She is heading to Paris for a global conference of mayors that will discuss issues such as climate change.

The Democratic Party has imploded. Its more liberal members have launched a party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which is now outpolling the Party of Hope.

PTI