Japan election: what’s next for Ishiba and the LDP after polls drubbing?

Only elected head of the party on October 1, Ishiba could be in office shorter than even former Japanese prime minister and LDP chief Sosuke Uno, according to analysts. Uno was in power for just 68 days in 1989 after revelations of his affair with a geisha forced him to resign.

“All the polls had been indicating that the LDP would lose seats. I estimated they would lose around 30 or so so losing 65 seats was a surprise,” said Go Ito, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Meiji University.

“A defeat on that scale just shows how angry the public has become at the party, and the biggest issue is the LDP members involved in the slush-fund scandal,” Ito told This Week in Asia. He was referring to the scandal that emerged last year and involved 600 million yen (US$4 million) being siphoned off by dozens of politicians and party accountants.

Ishiba was elected party leader mainly because he had not been implicated in any wrongdoing and promised the public that he would hold individual party members accountable for the funding scandal. His promise was undermined just days before the general election, however, when the party was forced to confirm that instead of following through with a commitment to withhold campaign funds for politicians linked to the scandal, it had quietly provided financial support to some of them.