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Voting kicked off in Japan’s general election on Sunday with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hoping to win over a pandemic-fatigued public with spending promises as his long-ruling conservatives seek a fresh start.
Kishida became leader of the Liberal Democratic Party a month ago after Yoshihide Suga resigned just a year into the job, partly due to public discontent over his response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Following a record wave of infections that pushed the Tokyo Olympics behind closed doors, cases have now plummeted and most restrictions have been lifted.
While this may ease some voters’ frustrations, the LDP — which has held power almost continuously since the 1950s — is likely to lose seats and may have trouble retaining its commanding majority, analysts say.
Kishida, 64, has pledged to issue a fresh stimulus package worth tens of trillions of yen to counter the impact of the pandemic on the world’s third-largest economy.
He has also outlined plans to distribute wealth more fairly under a so-called new capitalism, although details so far remain vague.
Voters in Tokyo told AFP the virus crisis was an important factor in their decision.
“The economy is suffering because of the coronavirus, so I compared the politicians’ responses,” said Chihiro Sato, 38, a housewife and mother of a toddler.
Teruyo Kaneko, a 76-year-old retiree, said she was “focused on virus policies, and also wanted to say something to the long-running government about its arbitrary way of decision-making”.
But engineer Hiroyasu Onishi, 79, said he was more concerned by “the military threat from China”.
As of 11 am, voter turnout stood at 11.3 percent, down nearly one percentage point on the last general election in 2017.
Japan’s 106 million voters have “struggled to get excited about the new prime minister”, said Stefan Angrick, a senior…
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Source : france24
