Japan's Ruling LDP Faces Reckoning Amid New Scandal

Public support plunges over PM Ishiba's gift vouchers for party lawmakers

- Walter Sim

TOKYO - A sense of crisis is building within Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as its status as the ruling party is again in jeopardy after a series of money-related scandals.

The LDP has had nearly uninterrupted rule since its founding in 1955, save for two spells from 1993 to 1994, and from 2009 to 2012.

But a drip-drip of revelations that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has become the latest in a series of LDP leaders to dole out gift vouchers to party lawmakers has ignited public fury, sending support for his government crashing to new lows.

"The LDP is truly at a crossroads," lawmaker Shinjiro Koizumi, who is from the LDP and has been touted as a future PM, said on March 20. "We are in a situation where we must somehow regain trust, or face abandonment by the people again."

But even if the LDP does not fall as the ruling party, experts believe that Mr Ishiba's days as party chief and prime minister may be numbered.

Mr Ishiba insisted that no laws were broken since the vouchers, worth 100,000 yen (S$895) each and given to 15 rookie lawmakers at a March 3 dinner, were paid for out of his own pocket. These gift certificates were returned.

He was initially defiant, even berating a journalist at a televised news conference by demanding to know exactly which law, clause and article was broken. He has since apologized for the gifts, saying they were a misjudgment.

Yet the mea culpa has failed to quell speculation that the money might instead have come from a Cabinet Secretariat fund paid for by taxpayers.

Nor has it quashed talk among legal circles about potential illegality. This depends on how the Political Funds Control Act is interpreted.

The contrition has also failed to quieten criticism.

Mr Masakazu Tokura, who chairs the powerful Keidanren business lobby, said the practice is "out of step with common sense of the times".