Japan’s Abe takes gamble

Calls snap election but analyst says he may have made fatal underestimation.

Seeking to capitalise on a fractured and weak opposition and a healthy lead in the polls, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stunned Japan by gambling on a snap election more than a year before it was due.

The parallels with another world leader, Britain’s Theresa May, are striking.

In April, May caught the country off guard by calling an election, hoping to take advantage of a 20-point poll lead over the opposition Labour party and secure her own mandate to take Britain out of the European Union.

“Both leaders called a snap election at a time their public support was not going to get better,” said Sadafumi Kawato, professor of political science at the University of Tokyo.

But in May’s case, the gamble backfired spectacularly.

After a campaign widely seen as lacklustre and in which May came across as distant and robotic, she lost 13 seats and was forced into a controversial deal with Northern Ireland’s ultraconservative DUP party to cling onto a majority.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn defied predictions of an electoral meltdown and campaigned strongly, being seen as close to the voters in contrast to an aloof May, dismissed in one paper as a “dead woman walking.”

British voters were also furious that May called an election after repeatedly insisting this was not on the cards. Some experts warned Abe could face a similar backlash.

Yoel Sano, head of Global Political and Security Risk from BMI Research, said Japan’s leader may have “underestimated the electorate’s potential to switch to the opposition”. –