TOKYO: Approval ratings for Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba have fallen ahead of an October 27 general election, one weekend poll showed, with another survey suggesting the ruling coalition could struggle to secure a majority.
Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for most of Japan’s post-war history.
Scandals over funding and LDP lawmakers’ ties to the Unification Church, compounded by voter discontent over rising prices, caused the party’s ratings to plummet during the tenure of Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida.
A Kyodo News survey on Saturday and Sunday put the current approval rating for Ishiba’s cabinet at 41.4 percent, down from 42.0 percent a week earlier.
The disapproval rating was 40.4 percent in the most recent survey of some 1,260 voters, Kyodo said Sunday. Disapproval in the October 12-13 poll was 36.7 percent.
A separate weekend survey by the liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper found public support for Ishiba’s cabinet at 33 percent, below 39 percent who disapproved.
Those results are worse than Kishida faced in 2021 ahead of his first general election as premier: 42 percent approval against 31 percent disapproval, the Asahi said.
The daily said its polls indicated that the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito ran the risk of losing a majority in the upcoming vote.
Jiji Press said its polls and reporting showed the coalition was likely to retain its majority, although the LDP may not pass the threshold on its own — a possibility reflected in several previous polls by other outlets.
The conservative LDP and Komeito, a moderate party backed by a Buddhist-linked group, have been in power since 2012 when late former premier Shinzo Abe won a landslide victory.
“Regardless of whether or not we lose our majority, we should hold positive talks with parties that are trying to develop the country with the same policies,” the LDP’s secretary general Hiroshi Moriyama said in a political debate program aired by public broadcaster NHK on Sunday.
Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
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Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
- Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
