By Noriaki Kinoshita
Komeito is frustrated that Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headquarters did not take sufficient action prior to the re-held Upper House election for the Hiroshima constituency on April 25. The LDP candidate, whom Komeito endorsed, lost the election. Komeito understood the election result to stem from voter dissatisfaction with COVID-19 measures and the recent “politics and money” scandals. Voters expressed their discontent by “voting against the LDP.” Komeito is concerned that it will be “dragged down” together with the LDP in the next Lower House election if Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga does not take preemptive action.
“This could have an impact on the Lower House [election in the] Hiroshima 3rd district,” Komeito Secretary-General Keiichi Ishii told reporters on the night of April 25 after the LDP defeat. The LDP and Komeito agreed to back Komeito Deputy Representative Tetsuo Saito as the ruling party candidate in the Hiroshima 3rd district [in the Lower House election]. In return, Komeito will support LDP candidates in Hiroshima’s other single-seat districts. Ishii emphasized that this policy will not change.
Komeito, which aims for Saito’s “certain victory” in the next Lower House election, put the entire party’s weight behind the Hiroshima election. After the campaign period opened, Komeito Representative Natsuo Yamaguchi visited Hiroshima on April 11, and Ishii visited on April 8 and 19. Minoru Harada, chairperson of the Soka Gakkai, Komeito’s support base, visited Hiroshima before the campaign period, showing an unusual amount of enthusiasm for the endorsed candidate.
On the other hand, the LDP sent neither Suga nor Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai to Hiroshima. The two parties clearly placed different levels of importance on the election. On April 26, one day after the election, a Komeito insider complained that the “LDP was the problem.” The LDP wished to minimize the adverse effects of the large-scale vote-buying scandal and the divide between LDP headquarters and the LDP’s Hiroshima prefectural federation created over the candidacy of former Upper House member Anri Kawai in the 2019 Upper House election. The LDP’s move was seen as a “lack of effort” by Komeito, however.
Suga and Nikai have not clearly explained the connection between the 150 million yen provided by LDP headquarters and the funds used to buy votes in the “Kawai case.” Some in Komeito say that “if Nikai had apologized for the incident in Hiroshima, the results might have been slightly different.”
During the election campaign, the LDP gave former agriculture minister Koya Nishikawa the position of special counselor to the secretary-general despite the fact that he was suspected of receiving money from major egg-producer Akita Foods Group. The LDP then had to deal with two issues, the Kawai case and the egg corruption case. A top Komeito official fumed, “It’s annoying that the LDP does not seem to realize that this is their election.”
Without LDP’s cooperation, however, Komeito does not expect to win the nine single-seat districts in which it plans to field candidates in the Lower House election. The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, an event of importance to Komeito, is coming up in July 2021. Top Komeito officials make no public complaints against the LDP, but a Komeito insider expressed anxiety about the LDP base declining further: “I hope the atmosphere of ‘let’s teach the administration a lesson’ does not continue.” (Abridged)
