TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pleaded for support for his faltering Liberal Democratic Party on the eve of Sunday elections, saying that only the ruling bloc has the ability to turn around Japan's economy.
Wrapping up campaigning in what is expected to be one of the most heated elections in years, Abe told a crowd of thousands in central Tokyo: "We will move forward with reforms and improve the economy."
"There is no way the Democrats and other opposition parties can push through reforms," he said, rolling up his sleeves and speaking in a voice hoarse from a campaign that has failed to reverse his dismal poll ratings.
His own seat -- in the more powerful lower house -- is not up for election, but analysts and polls suggest voter dissatisfaction with him could spill over and lead to the ousting of candidates from his long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Ichiro Ozawa, whose opposition Democratic Party of Japan has benefited from a series of scandals that have tarred Abe's government, said, "This is a truly important election that will determine the future of Japan. I am staking my life on this election."
Though leaders were stumping in different locations, their messages to the voters were pretty much the same -- their opponent can't be trusted to run the government.
Setting up what is expected to be a very close battle, one-half of the seats in the 242-member upper house of parliament will be contested on Sunday. Polls suggest the ruling party headed by Abe may face difficulty maintaining its majority over the fast-rising Democrats, Japan's main opposition party.
Abe has alienated voters with his handling of the government's misplacement of millions of pension records, scandals that led to a suicide within his Cabinet and a general feeling of weakness in the face of hard leadership questions.
In the latest polls, released Friday, 27.4 per cent of respondents in a Kyodo News agency survey said they would vote for the Democrats, almost unchanged from the July 14-15 poll of 27.2 per cent. Those who favor Abe's party edged up to 21.5 per cent from 18.3 per cent.
More tellingly, the poll suggested that most Japanese want the Liberal Democrats out.
It found that 56.3 per cent of respondents hope the LDP-led ruling coalition will lose a majority in the upper house, up from 52.2 per cent, while those who wish the ruling bloc to maintain a majority fell to just 27.2 per cent from 31.3 per cent.
Kyodo conducted the poll July 25-26 interviewing 1,222 voters across the nation by telephone. No margin of error was provided.
The disapproval rate for Abe rose slightly to 59.7 percent, a record, from 58.8 percent, while his support rate showed a similar upward trend to 29.2 per cent from 28.1 per cent, Kyodo said.
Hoping to stem that trend, Abe and other party leaders have been retreating from current policy issues to the safer ground of appealing to voters' general fear of change and the unknown. And with memories of Japan's decade-long stagnation of the 1990s still fresh, they were focusing on holding on to the economic status quo.
Abe's party has run the country in an almost unbroken succession of administrations since it was formed in 1955, and candidates have repeatedly reminded voters that they steered the nation from the ruinous aftermath of World War II to the economic miracle of the 1970s and Japan's current status as the world's second-largest economy.
The Democrats, meanwhile, have countered with a litany of complaints.
Abe is being lambasted for brushing off warnings by the opposition late last year that pension records had been lost -- inaction that came back to haunt him in the spring, when the full scope of the records losses emerged. The government has not said yet how much the lost claims are worth, but the Communist Party estimates it at US$165 billion -- a substantial chunk of the $1.25 trillion in total deposits.
Abe has also been hobbled by troubles in his Cabinet.
His scandal-scarred agriculture minister committed suicide. His defense minister resigned over comments he made about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And his new agriculture minister is already mired in allegations that he misused public funds.
The ruling bloc has a commanding majority in the lower house of the parliament, so an election defeat in Sunday's polls would not immediately threaten its hold on power. But a humiliating loss could prompt calls for Abe to resign from other leaders within his party and from the public.
Abe's chief spokesman, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, indicated Friday that Abe does not intend to step down -- win or lose -- but will continue to stress his policies and try to regain public support.
