SEOUL — President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will have something new to bond over when they meet Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago: how to weather a storm of relentless political onslaughts.
Both are embroiled in controversies surrounding dodgy financial deals but, while Trump’s poll numbers are holding up, Abe’s have plummeted to record lows.
The Japanese leader is flailing so badly that former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has suggested that he should stand down at the end of June to avoid tainting the entire Liberal Democratic Party.
“When the current Diet term ends, that would be a good time for Abe to resign. No third term for him as the party president,” Koizumi, who was prime minister between 2001 and 2006, said in an interview published by the weekly magazine Aera on Monday.
The current session in Japan’s Diet, or parliament, finishes on June 20.
The scandals percolating around Abe will affect next year’s Upper House election, the former prime minister said. “Candidates will get anxious if they have to go into an election with Abe.”
Polls published on Monday showed Abe’s steadily tanking ratings have fallen further in recent days. One, from the Nippon News Network, put his approval rating at 26.7 percent, almost four points down from March and the first time it has fallen into the 20s since Abe returned as prime minister in 2012.
Other polls put Abe in the 30s, but this is a far cry from the support levels in the 60s he was enjoying at the beginning of last year.
As many as 50,000 people protested outside the Diet over the weekend, calling Abe a “liar” and urging him to resign.
The LDP, which has been in power for all but five of the years since it was formed in 1955, changed its rules last year to allow leaders to seek a third term at the helm. At the time, Abe seemed a shoo-in to serve until 2021, which would make him Japan’s longest-serving prime minister and give him a chance to pursue some of his controversial goals.
But in the ensuing months, he has been plagued by a cronyism scandal that won’t go away but has yet to be damning enough to topple him.
Abe has not been able to shake allegations that his government gave huge discounts in land sales to two educational institutions linked to associates of Abe and his wife, and then tried to cover up the links.
