Elections in Japan: what will happen next for Ishiba and the LDP after the election defeat?

JapanPrime Minister of Russia Shigeru Ishiba On Monday he insisted he would not resign and reached out to potential political allies after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s resounding defeat in lower house elections.

Analysts were surprised by the extent of the party’s poor performance and said that election result Sunday will be fatal for the fate of Ishiba and the LDP. Most predicted that Ishiba would no longer hold office by the time of the upper house elections in July.

Analysts say Ishiba, who was elected head of the party on October 1, will be able to serve longer in office than even former Japanese Prime Minister and LDP head Sosuke Uno. Uno was in power for just 68 days in 1989 after revelations of his affair with a geisha forced him to resign.

“All the polls indicated that the LDP would lose seats. I estimate they will lose about 30 or so, the loss of 65 seats was a surprise,” said Go Ito, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Meiji University.

“A defeat of this magnitude just shows how angry the public is with the party, and the biggest problem is the LDP members involved in the slush fund scandal,” Ito told This Week in Asia. He was referring to a scandal that erupted last year involving the siphoning of 600 million yen ($4 million) by dozens of politicians and party accountants.

Ishiba was elected party leader mainly because he was not implicated in any wrongdoing and promised the public that he would hold individual party members accountable for the funding scandal. However, his promise was broken just days before the general election when the party was forced to confirm that instead of honoring a commitment to withhold campaign funds from politicians linked to the scandal, it had quietly provided financial support to some of them.