Japan PM Ishiba's ruling coalition loses majority first time since 2009

In a major blow to Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the country’s ruling coalition has lost its majority in the parliament in the latest elections. The Opposition parties in the country managed to secure more than half the seats in the lower house, provisional election results showed. The result which was released on Monday, can be seen as the worst result for the party in over a decade.

With the results of just 22 seats left to declare, LDP and its coalition partner Komeito had managed to gain only 208 seats. Meanwhile, the Opposition won around 235 seats as of now, 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 govern alone.

The deplorable results of the General elections have now triggered uncertainty over how the world’s fourth-largest economy will be governed. According to NHK, the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) won 143 seats.

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It is pertinent to note that the elections in the country were called by LDP’s new leader Shigeru Ishiba three days after he was selected as the country’s new Prime Minister. “Voters have handed us a harsh verdict and we have to humbly accept this result,” the Japanese premier 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 PM Fumio Kishida announced that he would be stepping down from the office, prompting inter-party elections.

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However, one of the major problems the country is currently facing is a lack of unity between the Opposition parties. The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6 per cent before parliament was dissolved. This was way less than LDP’s approval rating of 20 per cent. “It is so hard to make decisions to choose parties, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a long-time LDP supporter who works in the care-home sector, told BBC before the polls opened.

The LDP, she said, has its problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition also does not stand out at all”. “They sure complain a lot, but it’s not at all clear on what they want to do,” the 66-year-old Japanese politician furthered.