Commentary: A disastrous poll puts Japan politics on shaky path

TOKYO: In US politics, a Scaramucci has come to mean a unit of time lasting around 10 days, the length of Anthony Scaramucci’s term as White House director of communications. Perhaps Japan is about to coin an Ishiba?
Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has dominated Japanese politics since the aftermath of World War II, might be counting his time in power in such limited terms. Elected as leader just last month, Ishiba’s task was simple: Use his purported popularity with the public to jazz up the LDP, which has been suffering from historic low ratings.
Those were caused by a funding scandal, its ties to a cultish religion, and the impact on households of the return of inflation for the first time in a generation, as well as the dislike for Ishiba’s unpopular predecessor Fumio Kishida. 
Instead, he has presided over one of the worst nights for the LDP in recent memory. The party has not only failed to secure a majority of seats for the first time since 2009, it won’t even be able to form a government together with long-term partner Komeito.
After years of relative stability, Japanese politics is about to enter a shaky period. The prospect of rainbow coalition governments and a return to short-term prime ministers seems a distinct possibility. 
How did this happen? Ishiba was meant to be not just popular, but the most admired lawmaker within the LDP.
His surprise come-from-behind victory in last month’s race to head the ruling party was a repudiation of over a decade of domination by the former faction of the late Shinzo Abe, which was most implicated in the funding scandal. 
Instead, he has done almost everything wrong. It is hard to understand how such an experienced politician, one who stood in five separate elections to become leader of the ruling party, could have been so unprepared.
First, he alienated conservatives within the LDP. The Abe faction might have deserved a bloody nose for its slush-fund issues. But the LDP is fundamentally a centre-right organisation, and Ishiba offered no olive branch to the party’s conservative wing.
Instead, he appointed to his Cabinet men like Seiichiro Murakami, who two years ago was disciplined by the party for his shocking remarks referring to Abe as a “traitor” not long after his death. 
Having annoyed the right, he then went and pulled the rug from under his own supporters, damaging his reputation as a man of principles by flip-flopping on a number of his core policies and beliefs.
And having hinted he was in no rush to call an election if he won the race to be leader, he not only backtracked, but also didn’t follow standard operating procedure and wait for data to confirm his popularity in opinion polls (instead he received the lowest ratings of any new prime minister this century). 
The public was crying out for change, but Ishiba entirely failed to offer it, instead using warmed-over catchphrases from Kishida. His stump speeches amounted to a reactive, reflexive apology tour.
Most politicians articulate a vision they know they probably can’t deliver. Ishiba has failed to even present one.
Add to this a series of gaffes – like his reference to the “nightmare” government of the 2009-2012 opposition, an expression Ishiba himself criticised Abe for using in the past – and his struggles to draw a line under the slush fund scandal, and it’s clear he was floundering. 
Even so, the scale of the trouncing is stunning. What happens next isn’t yet so obvious.
Ishiba has 30 days to reach an agreement with potential coalition partners and form a government before the Diet must be convened. It could end up being a very good night for Yuichiro Tamaki, the head of the Democratic Party for the People, which not only quadrupled its seats but seems a logical choice to join an expanded coalition.
But as with all compromise governments, there will be infighting and disagreements. 
Who will preside over that remains to be seen. It was Ishiba who set the conditions for victory, declaring his goal was a majority for the LDP and Komeito. Traditionally, leaders who fail to achieve their stated goal resign before too long, as Abe did when he lost an upper house election in 2007. 
But with the LDP having just held its largest, longest election to find a new figurehead, it’s unclear if there will be the appetite to go again. The party is said to be wary of the chaos of the post-Koizumi era in the late 2000s, when its constant chopping and changing of leaders ultimately evaporated public support, culminating in a loss of power in 2009.
It’s also possible that no leader could have avoided this result; in an alternate universe where Ishiba did not call a quick election, Yoshihiko Noda, the newly elected leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, might have had time to coordinate with other opposition parties and boot the LDP out of power entirely. 
There also aren’t many great candidates waiting in the wings. Sanae Takaichi, who Ishiba beat in the runoff election last month, is divisive. Shinjiro Koizumi, the third leading candidate in September’s vote, might well have been a better look for the party – but as the election strategy chief presiding over this drubbing, he’s in no position to make his case to be leader (agreeing to take that role might be another example of his less-than-astute political instincts). 
And yet the LDP has little time to reorganise. There is an upper house election coming next summer, by which time the opposition parties may be able to form the alliances needed to win. Japan has little room for such interregnums. However you measure it, Ishiba doesn’t have time on his side.