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Support for Kishida cabinet at 35%, lowest since launch
Earlier this week, Fumio Kishida faced another setback as he gave a key government post to his oldest son in his early 30s, with the opposition bloc lambasting the appointment as nepotism.
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Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida walks on stage during the state funeral of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on September 27, 2022.
(AFP/Franck Robichon)
T
he approval rating for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Cabinet has fallen to 35.0 percent, its lowest level since its launch last year, a Kyodo News survey showed Sunday, as he struggles to deal with public discontent over higher prices and his party's shadowy links to the Unification Church.
Earlier this week, Fumio Kishida faced another setback as he gave a key government post to his oldest son in his early 30s, with the opposition bloc lambasting the appointment as nepotism.
The Kishida administration has already been shaken by several controversies, such as his Liberal Democratic Party's suspicious ties with the dubious Unification Church and a contentious state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was fatally shot in July.
On Tuesday, the government said Kishida tapped his son Shotaro as an executive secretary to the prime minister, swiftly triggering a backlash from other parties, including the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
Even some ruling party members have been disappointed that Kishida has avoided giving a reasonable explanation for the appointment of his son, who had worked as a secretary at his father's office since March 2020 after leaving Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co.
Many Japanese government officials have become worried that public support ratings for Kishida's Cabinet may keep dropping toward what is widely seen as the "danger level" of 30 percent in recent months. The approval rating stood at 40.2 percent in a Kyodo News poll last month, down sharply from over 63 percent shortly after the LDP's sweeping victory in the upper house election in July.
