{"id":357527,"date":"2017-09-28T07:05:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T07:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=357527"},"modified":"2017-11-10T11:07:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T11:07:44","slug":"japan-election-pm-shinzo-abe-dissolves-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/09\/japan-election-pm-shinzo-abe-dissolves-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan election: PM Shinzo Abe dissolves parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has dissolved the lower house of the parliament ahead of a snap election.<\/p>\n
The poll,\u00a0announced on Monday\u00a0and which comes a year early, will take place on 22 October.<\/p>\n
Mr Abe is seeking a fresh mandate amid a rebound in his approval ratings and the ongoing North Korea nuclear crisis.<\/p>\n
The right-wing hawk became prime minister in 2012, and his Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) leads a ruling coalition that controls the Diet.<\/p>\n
Mr Abe suffered a\u00a0drop in popularity\u00a0earlier this year over allegations of cronyism.<\/p>\n
But he’s seen fresh support after North Korea\u00a0fired two ballistic missiles over Japan,\u00a0which Mr Abe took a strong stance against.<\/p>\n
His call for a snap election was seen as taking advantage of a weak opposition, and the LDP is still leading in opinion polls.<\/p>\n
But he now faces a new contender in the form of the fledgling conservative Party of Hope, which was only formally unveiled on Wednesday and has already begun attracting some support.<\/p>\n
It is led by the popular Yuriko Koike,\u00a0Tokyo’s first female governor\u00a0and a former television news anchor.<\/p>\n
Several lawmakers from the main opposition Democratic Party, which has been struggling, have already defected to the Party of Hope.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Democratic Party’s leader proposed to his members a de facto merger where all their candidates would run under the Party of Hope’s banner, in order to present a united challenge to Mr Abe and the LDP.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has dissolved the lower house of the parliament ahead of a snap election. The poll,\u00a0announced on Monday\u00a0and which comes a year early, will take place on 22 October. Mr Abe is seeking a fresh mandate amid a rebound in his approval ratings and the ongoing North Korea nuclear crisis. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[1351,1388],"yoast_head":"\n