Japan’s Koike: Trump White House ‘unstable’

Bloomberg

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, leader of Japan’s nascent opposition Party of Hope, said on Monday that she’s unsure whether President Donald Trump’s administration is stable even while affirming the importance of the US-Japan alliance.
Koike, 65, told Bloomberg in an interview that Trump’s White House may be unstable because of the many changes in personnel since the president took office in January. Her comments stand in contrast to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has courted Trump in an attempt to bolster ties between the two allies.
The interview came hours after a poll indicated that her bid to upset Abe’s ruling party in a general election less than two weeks away may be losing steam.
Thirteen percent of respondents to a Yomiuri survey said they’d vote for her party in the proportional representation section of the Oct. 22 lower house election, down from 19 percent about a week ago. Support for Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party fell slightly to 32 percent in the telephone poll of 1,099 eligible voters. Twenty-seven percent said they were still undecided.
Koike told Bloomberg that the emergence last week of the new left-leaning Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan may have been a reason for her party’s fall in the polls. She also said she suspected Abe called the election to hide from a raft of scandals that have hurt the premier. The Yomiuri poll is good news for Abe, who is seeking a fresh mandate ahead of an LDP leadership vote next year that could put him in line to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. Koike had launched Hope last month in a surprise move just hours before Abe said he’d call an election, rallying a weakened opposition in a race that had been widely seen as comfortable for the premier.
The survey was conducted over a weekend that saw a series of debates between the leaders of the main political parties. Abe said the escalating North Korea threat showed that Japan needed his leadership, and pointed to the nation’s growth record. He also said that his goal in the election is for the ruling coalition to win a majority of parliamentary seats.
It currently holds about 68 percent in the 475-member body.
Koike, meanwhile, pushed her “Yurinomics” economic platform, saying the prime minster hadn’t delivered on promised reforms. She also repeatedly denied she would quit her governor’s post to run in the election and give her a chance of becoming prime minister. She has to decide by Tuesday, when the election campaign formally opens. In Monday’s interview she said she wasn’t planning any surprises.
In the Yomiuri poll, 71 percent of respondents said Koike should stay in her current role, with just 7 percent saying she should stand in the general election. She hasn’t said who she would support as PM.
Only a few issues clearly separate Koike’s Hope party and Abe’s LDP. She wants the nation to ditch atomic power by 2030, while the prime minister has pledged to raise the nuclear share of the nation’ energy mix. Citing falling real wages, Hope has also promised to freeze Japan’s sales tax rate at 8 percent, while the ruling party has vowed to raise the levy to 10 percent in 2019 to pay for greater spending for families in areas such as education.