Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba’s ruling coalition loses majority for the first time since 2009 – Firstpost

In a major blow to Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the country’s governing coalition lost its majority in parliament in the last election. The country’s opposition parties managed to secure more than half of the seats in the lower house, preliminary election results showed. The result announced on Monday can be seen as the worst result for the party in more than ten years.

With only 22 seats left to announce, LDP and its coalition partner Komeito had managed to win only 208 seats. Meanwhile, the opposition has currently won around 235 seats. BBC reported. It is pertinent to note that a party needs a majority of 233 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Diet, to rule alone.

The regrettable results of the general election have now led to uncertainty over how the world’s fourth largest economy will be governed. According to NHKThe largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), won 143 seats.

‘Hard statement’: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru

It is pertinent to note that the elections in the country were called by Shigeru Ishiba, the new leader of the LDP, three days after he was elected as the country’s new Prime Minister. “The voters have judged us harshly and we must humbly accept this result,” the Japanese prime minister told NHK.

The elections came after a turbulent few years for the LDP, which witnessed a plethora of scandals, widespread voter apathy and record low approval ratings. Amid all the chaos, former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he would resign, triggering inter-party elections.

However, one of the biggest problems the country currently faces is a lack of unity among opposition parties. The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6 percent before parliament was dissolved. This was far less than LDP’s approval rating of 20 percent. “It’s so difficult to make decisions to take sides, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a former LDP supporter who works in the nursing home sector, told me BBC before the polls opened.

The LDP, she said, has problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition is also not noticeable at all.” “They certainly complain a lot, but it is not at all clear what they want to do,” the 66-year-old Japanese politician continued.