Almost half of Japanese voters want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to resign, a survey showed yesterday, as calls to do so came not just from the opposition but from within his own party in the wake of its election bashing.

Abe's approval rate also slid below 30 percent level, seen as critical for a Cabinet to stay in power, according to the poll conducted by Kyodo news agency on Monday and yesterday.

The hawkish Abe has vowed to stay on despite the loss of his coalition's majority in the upper house in Sunday's vote - his first big electoral test since taking office last September.

The Kyodo survey showed that 49.5 percent of respondents said Abe should step down, while 43.7 percent said they wanted him to stay. Support for his Cabinet slipped to 29 percent, down 6.8 point from a survey in early June.

Abe's bloc was not automatically ousted from government by the upper house defeat since it has a huge majority in the more powerful lower chamber, and a lack of suitable successors in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) may help him survive.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Abe's right-hand man, acknowledged that a couple of party executives at a meeting yesterday had questioned Abe's intention to stay on.

The Kyodo poll showed LDP support falling short of the opposition Democratic Party for the first time since 2004.

Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa, 65, has heart problems and his absence from the public eye since the election has again raised fears for his health.

Doubts still dog Ozawa as he tries to propel the Democrats to power in a country dominated by a single party for most of the past five decades.

Ozawa may be a brilliant political tactician, but he may also be too old-fashioned for the modern media age, the Democrats are divided on some important policy issues, and voters will be wary of putting power in the hands of an untested party.

Agencies

(China Daily 08/01/2007 page8)