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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in a speech in Tokyo: as unpopular as few predecessors
Photo: JIJI PRESS / EPA
Election fever has broken out in Japan. From morning to evening, television brings new forecasts and assessments. Graphics light up, photos of the candidates and their respective supporters are displayed. It is an exclusive kind of ritual: Voting is on the future of the third largest economy, but most Japanese can only watch. And there is hardly any talk of pressing political issues - the corona crisis, the sluggish economy, the rivalry with China.
Instead, reporters and commentators are primarily concerned with one question: who will bring together the most supporters when the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elects its new chairman - and thus also the future prime minister - on September 29?
Which candidate can the party win the House of Commons election with in October?
Since the hapless Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced last Friday that he would not run again for the LDP chairmanship and thus also be thrown as Prime Minister, Japan has been politically in motion.
In the end, the 72-year-old was as unpopular as few predecessors.
Fearing defeat in the general election, more and more party friends refused to support him.
It became more and more lonely around him, in the end he reaped most of all pity.
And now Japan's eternal ruling party is staging a fascinating spectacle with which it has often asserted its power. She has ruled the island country since 1955 - apart from brief interruptions. And it could stay that way if the party strategists' calculations work: compatriots should forget the hapless incumbent with his failure. Instead, for a few days now, many channels and the papers have been almost exclusively about the LDP and its search for the new face. The 383 lower house MPs of the party are entitled to vote in this election; a further 383 votes will be allocated on the basis of a vote among the more than one million party members.
The current excitement in Tokyo's government district is somewhat reminiscent of the Shinto shrine festivals, where people shouting holy litters with local deities through the streets.
These popular amusements are called "Matsuri" in Japanese, and the word for politics is very similar: "Matsuri-goto".
The prime minister failed to prepare the health system for the pandemic
The country could now use a debate about the causes of Suga's astonishing crash: Only a year ago he became prime minister - as the successor to Shinzo Abe, whom he had served as chief cabinet secretary for eight years. At that time, too, the LDP promised the compatriots a new start in terms of personnel. The trick worked. In surveys, the popularity of the new premier initially rose to over 70 percent. But then it turned out to be the wrong choice: In the corona crisis, he always prayed the same perseverance slogans. Against the majority of the population and warnings from virologists, he went through the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, albeit without spectators in the stadiums.
Meanwhile, the number of corona infected people in Japan rose to a similarly high level as in other leading industrial countries. Many compatriots blame the prime minister for this. He failed to prepare the health system for the pandemic, for example by increasing testing or building field hospitals. Many corona infected people were turned away from the hospitals because intensive care beds were occupied. Suga asked people who were comparatively easily ill to cure themselves at home. For many of those affected, it sounded like the government was letting the people sit in front of it.
Last weekend alone, around 135,000 people infected with corona were forced to stay at home, a shockingly high number for a high-tech country.
Almost every day the media reports about people who die at home because they do not receive adequate medical care: A baby recently died near Tokyo after it was delivered at home by its mother who had corona.
There is no opposition worthy of the name in Japan
But instead of discussing effective measures against Corona, the LDP is now arguing about Suga's successor. The following politicians are considered to be promising candidates: Taro Kono, 58, the Minister for Administrative Reform. At the same time, he organizes the vaccination campaign against Corona, which started late in Japan and then stalled for a long time. But Kono compensates for this disadvantage with a hustle and bustle on social media. He was previously Secretary of State and Defense, studied in the USA and is considered urbane.
However, Kono has not yet officially announced his candidacy.
His strongest potential rivals are Shigeru Ishiba, 64, the former Secretary of Defense;
he is considered a reformer.
It is currently speculated whether he will renounce his own candidacy in favor of Kono in order to jointly replace the old guard around ex-Prime Minister Abe and initiate a generation change.
Fumiko Kishida, 64, who was foreign minister under Prime Minister Abe for a long time, is also hopeful.
Two women are also positioning themselves: Sanae Takaichi, the ultra-conservative former minister of internal affairs and communications.
According to surveys, she is the least popular among the population, but she is considered the preferred candidate of ex-Prime Minister Abe - with his help, she could possibly make it to a second ballot and thus to the final selection.
She often makes pilgrimages to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Japan's major war criminals of World War II are venerated. Seiko Noda, 61, the former post and interior minister, is also soliciting supporters. However, it is given little chance.
What makes the election spectacle of the LDP difficult to calculate this time, maybe until the last minute: The bosses of the big party wings, above all ex-Prime Minister Abe and Finance Minister Taro Aso, have so far not been able to swear their troops to a specific candidate .
Younger MPs in particular are too afraid of losing their constituencies in the approaching general election.
Most of them are therefore less likely to vote according to the ideological preferences of their wing bosses, but rather according to who, as the top candidate, keeps the LDP's generally expected loss of seats within limits.
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Criticism of corona policy: Japan's Prime Minister Suga is facing the end
With its candidate carousel, the LDP should dominate the domestic news in the next three weeks. There is no opposition worthy of the name in Japan. Politically, everything is going as usual in Japan: the future chairman will also be elected prime minister after the vote on September 29th. Shortly thereafter, he or she will dissolve the House of Commons and hold new elections. Perhaps by then the corona numbers will also decrease. With the new figurehead, the LDP could then win. The main thing is that it stays in power.