TOKYO (AA) - Official campaigning for Japan's upper house election kicked off Wednesday, with the ruling coalition seeking to maintain its majority and win at least half of the 121 seats up for grabs.
Japan is gearing up for a July 10 general election to the House of Councilors, with around 390 candidates expected to compete for half the seats in the 242-member chamber.
Much will be at stake in the election. It will be the last upper house election in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, and thus the last real chance he has to pursue some of his favorite policies, such as amending the constitution and his economic recovery plan -- dubbed “Abenomics”.
“There are people who say they still aren't feeling a sense of economic recovery," Kyodo news agency quoted Abe as saying on a television show Tuesday.
"We're still not finished, but we want to kick [our efforts] up several gears and strongly move forward," he insisted.
Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Party (DP) leader’s Katsuya Okada warned that the government’s economic policies “have stalled".
"Individuals aren't prospering and their livelihoods aren't secure, so we are proposing economic policies that balance growth with the distribution [of wealth]," Okada said in a leader’s debate Tuesday.
Around 2.4 million young nationals will be able to vote for the first time in the polls, after an electoral law amendment lowering the suffrage age from 20 to 18 went into effect Sunday.
The election comes at a time when many Japanese citizens are expressing concerns over economic growth and sustainability.
Around 62.2 percent of respondents in the recent Kyodo poll said they had doubts about the effectiveness of Abenomics, compared to 28.0 percent who expressed confidence in the policies.
The news agency also cited a nationwide telephone survey that showed that support for Abe’s cabinet stood at 47.8 percent and disapproval at 43.5 percent -- marking a decrease of 1.6 percentage points and an increase of 2.2 points, respectively, from the beginning of this month to last week.
While Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito seek to maintain their majority, this election should also be an important test for the opposition’s new joint campaign strategy that the DP forged with the Japanese Communist Party.
They agreed to coordinate their candidates in the 32 single-seat electoral districts so they do not split the vote.