Kishida struggles to survive kickbacks scandal as rivals sharpen knives
Support for PM falls amid ‘great turmoil’ within ruling LDP and growing public anger
With Prime Minister Fumio Kishida struggling to limit the fallout from the snowballing kickbacks scandal that has engulfed Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), his rivals are sharpening their knives and looking to make the most of the political opportunity they have been gifted.
“Kishida can theoretically survive because he does not have to face a general election until as late as October 2025, but it is hard to predict what might happen if his support rate continues to fall,” said Yoichi Shimada, a professor of politics and international relations at Fukui Prefectural University. “It is clear that some in the party are already moving against him,” he told the Post.
Kishida is reeling as yet more reports emerge in the media of LDP politicians failing to report income and expenditures from fundraising parties organised by the party’s factions, including the powerful conservative wing of the party that used to be headed by former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Suspicion of financial mismanagement has spread throughout the LDP, including to Kishida’s own faction, and the firing of five members of the cabinet late last week has failed to stem the growing public anger at elected members of the Diet simply pocketing millions of yen.
The conservative Yomiuri newspaper condemned the party that it generally supports in an editorial on Thursday headlined “Personnel reshuffle not sufficient to dispel distrust over allegations”. The left-leaning Mainichi went further by stating “the Kishida government is unfit to handle state affairs amid growing money scandal” the same day.
The public appears to agree. A Jiji News poll on December 14 put the prime minister’s support rate at a paltry 17.1 per cent while a Kyodo
News survey put it at a barely improved 22.3 per cent.
Kishida has not been helped by comments by some of his own party members, with Junji Suzuki, who was replaced as internal affairs minister on December 14, admitting he accepted 600,000 yen (HK$32,800) from the Abe faction between 2018 and 2022, saying that doing so was simply part of “the culture”.
Amid reports of “great turmoil” among party members and hurriedly arranged meetings over the weekend to discuss the likely demise of the government, Shigeru Ishiba has emerged as the first to indicate that he intends to challenge Kishida’s reign.
Ishiba, a former defence minister who previously stood for party leader, stepped down as leader of his LDP faction in 2020 and has operated as an independent ever since. That has enabled Ishiba to distance himself from the damaging reports of kickbacks, and he has moved quickly to take advantage of the situation.
On Sunday, Ishiba demanded that the party hold discussions in the early part of next year on amending the political funds control law. He has also called on politicians implicated in the scandal to provide explanations before prosecutors open legal investigations.
On December 11, as the scope of the scandal became apparent, Ishiba appeared on a television news programme to call for Kishida to resign as soon as the financial budget was completed in the new year.
There are also suggestions that Seiko Noda, who previously served as internal affairs minister and is also independent of an LDP faction, is considering mounting a challenge to Kishida.
The Asahi newspaper reported that Noda met supporters from her 2021 leadership bid on December 12, with one person present saying that the event was a “rally” to kick off her campaign.
The paper said others in the party had concluded that support for Kishida had waned to the point that he was commanding “a sinking ship” and that what was required now was to terminate the prime minister’s administration “to prevent the party from being crushed”.
Ishiba has widespread grass-roots support and was the first choice of a majority of rank-and-file party members in 2020, only to be defeated when fellow LDP politicians cast their votes.
However, Shimada said he personally did not see Ishiba “as too much of a threat” as he was too centrist for the party’s conservatives and was not entirely free of the whiff of scandal himself. But Shimada said Ishiba, Noda or yet another candidate could still benefit because so many senior party members had been implicated in the kickbacks scandal.
Stephen Nagy, a professor of international relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University, agreed that Ishiba was weighed down by political baggage and was “not well-supported within the party”.
He said the LDP would need to find a “consensus leader” who was untainted by the scandal and acceptable to enough members to replace Kishida in a leadership challenge.
It is hard to predict what might happen if his [Kishida’s] support rate continues to fall PROFESSOR YOICHI SHIMADA, FUKUI PREFECTURAL UNIVERSITY