Support For Japan’s PM Kishida Hits New Lows Despite Tax Cuts & Handouts

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's approval rating has sunk to the lowest of his entire tenure, with his ruling Liberal Democratic Party facing a humiliating defeat in a special election earlier in October. To tackle this unpopularity ahead of the party leadership vote next year, Kishida has offered tax breaks and more handouts.

Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida continues to sag further, despite his recent efforts to alter that dismal trajectory.

With the crucial party leadership vote set for next year, and the spiraling inflation and price pressures hammering voters’ pockets, Kishida has been desperate to boost his appeal with the electorate. Thus, he recently announced he planned to return some tax revenues to the public, offer more substantial handouts to Japan's low income population, and extend energy subsidies.

But newly-drummed up measures intended to woo the public were to no avail, with Fumio Kishida's approval rating hitting new lows, according to two polls.

Support for the PM sank by nine percentage points from last month, dropping to 33 percent, as per a survey commissioned by a local media outlet carried out on October 27-29. Close to two-thirds of the poll's respondents failed to approve of the planned tax rebate that Kishida has staked upon.

Another poll by a Japanese commercial television network discovered that support for the PM had slumped to 26.9 percent. Fifty-six percent of respondents in the survey also disapproved of the tax cut, with 42 percent of them slamming the move as no more than a ploy to prop up flagging government support. Another 26 percent singled out grave concerns about Japan's current fiscal health.

The approval ratings cited int the two polls are the lowest since Fumio Kishida took office in October 2021.

Previous polls have similarly shown cheerless figures for the Japanese prime minister. Earlier in the month, a poll conducted by a Japanese broadcaster showed as many as 54 percent of Japanese voters viewed the two-year performance of Fumio Kishida in office negatively amid high inflation, soaring prices, and other challenges. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said they could not assess his leadership positively. Half of those who responded believed that addressing the domestic price surge should be the government's priority.

The disapproval rating of the Japanese Cabinet also hit an 11-year high. As many as 60 percent of Japanese are discontent with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government - the highest figure for any Cabinet since 2012, which saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party return to power. The support rate for Kishida's Cabinet plummeted to a new all-time low of 29% from 31% in December 2022.

Reeling from such an approval rating, coupled with a by-election loss suffered by Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party in the Tokushima-Kochi prefecture on the island of Shikoku, the prime minister assembled some measures he had hoped would boost his standing.

“By returning part of the extra tax revenue gained through growth, we will ease the burden of rising prices on the people,” he told parliament earlier in October, adding that subsidies for gasoline, electricity, and household gas, set to last until the end of the year, would be extended until the spring.

The mulled tax cuts, according to ruling party officials, could be introduced as a flat rebate not linked to income size.

But the reality is that the consumer price index (CPI) in Tokyo, an acknowledged indicator of the nationwide core inflation trend, rose 2.7 percent in October. Furthermore, there have been reports that the Bank of Japan will revise its inflation forecasts upwards when offering its quarterly projections. With wage rises trailing behind inflation, it is small wonder that Fumio Kishida's approval rating is getting a hammering.

While the next Japanese general elections are scheduled on or before 31 October 2025, the unpopularity of the current prime minister could undermine his chances of holding on to his post as LDP leader in the party vote less than a year away.

The current approval crisis plaguing Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet has also been fueled by a swathe of controversial domestic and foreign policy decisions.

Thus, Japan began discharging more than a million tons of treated water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean on August 24, despite vehement objections from neighboring countries and local fishermen. Tokyo said that the water had been cleaned of all radionuclides except tritium, which was still within acceptable limits.

However, Japan's seafood exports plummeted by one third in August, against the backdrop of the water discharge, according to data provided by the Japanese Statistics Bureau. Fifteen countries stopped importing Japanese seafood that month. Another 24 states decreased their imports significantly.

Furthermore, under the current leadership, and with encouragement by Washington, Japan has been eagerly trying to justify the need to return to militarization.

After recent changes in the National Defense Strategy, Tokyo's military expenditures are slated to eventually correspond to those of most countries in the NATO bloc. Japan, which has also been coming together into a clear military alliance with the United States, eagerly jumped on the bandwagon of funneling financial support to Ukraine. Japan's aid to the Kiev regime reached $7.6 billion in August, according to the Finance Ministry, with Tokyo also toeing the Washington line by expanding its list of sanctions against Russia.