Pnyin - Nearly half of voters want Abe to quit: Poll

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Nearly half of voters want Abe to quit: Poll

Updated: 2007-08-01 07:01




Almost half of Japanese voters want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to resign,
a survey showed yesterday, as calls to do so came not just from the
opposition but from within his own party in the wake of its election
bashing.

Abe's approval rate also slid below 30 percent level, seen as critical
for a Cabinet to stay in power, according to the poll conducted by Kyodo
news agency on Monday and yesterday.

The hawkish Abe has vowed to stay on despite the loss of his coalition's
majority in the upper house in Sunday's vote - his first big electoral
test since taking office last September.

The Kyodo survey showed that 49.5 percent of respondents said Abe should
step down, while 43.7 percent said they wanted him to stay. Support for
his Cabinet slipped to 29 percent, down 6.8 point from a survey in early
June.

Abe's bloc was not automatically ousted from government by the upper
house defeat since it has a huge majority in the more powerful lower
chamber, and a lack of suitable successors in the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) may help him survive.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Abe's right-hand man,
acknowledged that a couple of party executives at a meeting yesterday had
questioned Abe's intention to stay on.

The Kyodo poll showed LDP support falling short of the opposition
Democratic Party for the first time since 2004.

Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa, 65, has heart problems and his
absence from the public eye since the election has again raised fears for
his health.

Doubts still dog Ozawa as he tries to propel the Democrats to power in a
country dominated by a single party for most of the past five decades.

Ozawa may be a brilliant political tactician, but he may also be too
old-fashioned for the modern media age, the Democrats are divided on some
important policy issues, and voters will be wary of putting power in the
hands of an untested party.

Agencies


















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