{"id":39085,"date":"2019-04-22T05:22:27","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T05:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39085"},"modified":"2019-04-22T05:22:27","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T05:22:27","slug":"abes-ruling-bloc-suffers-rare-losses-in-japans-by-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39085","title":{"rendered":"Abe’s ruling bloc suffers rare losses in Japan’s by-election"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc has suffered two rare losses in by-elections, an apparent warning from voters ahead of a national election for parliament’s upper house later this year.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s defeats in a lower house by-election in Osaka, western Japan, and another on the southern island of Okinawa – host to the bulk of US military in the country – were the first such losses since Abe returned to office in December 2012, except for one uncontested poll.<\/p>\n

“Each individual [ruling] Liberal Democratic Party member must take the results to heart and buckle down,” Abe told reporters on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

The defeats in the polls come after Japan’s Olympics minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, resigned a year before the Tokyo Olympics. A vice transport minister also quit over a separate gaffe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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China and Japan pledge to boost economic cooperation<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

“The cabinet support rate is maintaining a certain level, but if they do not eradicate laxity and conceit, the upper house election will perforce be a difficult fight,” said an editorial in the conservative Yomiuri newspaper.<\/p>\n

In a survey by public broadcaster NHK released this month, s<\/span>upport for Abe’s cabinet was at 47 percent, up five points from the previous month.<\/p>\n

In Okinawa, Tomohiro Yara, a freelance journalist backed by several opposition parties and running on an anti-US base platform, defeated a former cabinet minister.<\/p>\n

In Osaka, Shimpei Kitagawa, backed by the LDP and its junior partner Komeito, lost to Fumitake Fujita from Nippon Ishin.<\/p>\n

Speculation is simmering that Abe will call a snap lower house election in tandem with the upper house poll, possibly after announcing the postponement of a sales tax hike to 10 percent from eight percent scheduled for October.<\/p>\n

Top government officials vowed on Friday to go ahead with the tax rise, barring a big economic shock.
Such a “double election” might help take advantage of weakness among the fragmented opposition parties, but could also spark the opposition to cooperate on candidates.<\/p>\n

“Abe must be wondering which suffers more from weakness – LDP\/Komeito or the opposition,” said Sophia University political science professor Koichi Nakano.<\/p>\n

“A double election will also potentially galvanize the opposition into action … so it\u2019s a double edged sword.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n SOURCE:
\n Reuters news agency<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc has suffered two rare losses in by-elections, an apparent warning from voters ahead of a national election for parliament’s upper house later this year. Sunday’s defeats in a lower house by-election in Osaka, western Japan, and another on the southern island of Okinawa – host to the bulk…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}