Latest polls showed that the support rating for Prime Minster Taro Aso's cabinet is on the losing streak, falling further below the critical 30 percent mark.
The Daily Yomiuri reported Monday that the approval rating for Aso's cabinet fell by 0.5 percentage point to 20.4 percent while its disapproval rating jumped 5.6 points to 72.3 percent from the previous December survey, the highest for a cabinet in eight years.
And more people would prefer opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Ichiro Ozawa to be prime minister. The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents chose Aso, down 2 percentage points form the last survey while 39 percent said they would prefer Ozawa, up 3 points.
Also on Monday The Asahi Shimbun said that the Cabinet support rate in a recent survey sank to 19 percent, down from 22 percent in December.
And in a weekend survey conducted by Kyodo News, the approval rate for Aso's Cabinet dwindled by up to 6.3 percentage points to 19.2 percent from the pervious December survey in December.
Analysts said that the sagging support rates highlighted how serious the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) tactic of making Aso the candidate of the party for the next election has been undetermined, and the dwindling public support would likely compound the cabinet's problems in its governance.
Voters were believed to be shifting support away from Aso as they were increasingly discontented with the policies being implemented by the cabinet and concerned over its ability to handle the ongoing financial crisis.
Of the government's 2 trillion yen flat-sum cash benefit program, which was the centerpiece of the fiscal 2008 second supplementary budget, 63 percent of respondents were against it in the Asahi poll and as were 78 percent in the Yomiuri poll.
And the opposition DPJ's share of support overwhelmed that of the ruling LDP in the next lower house election, showed the polls.
In the Daily Yomiuri poll, 39 percent of the respondents said they would vote for the DPJ against 24 percent for the LDP. Similarly, the Kyodo News survey showed that 39.7 percent said they would vote for the DPJ while 26.3 percent said they would cast ballots for the LDP.
Surprisingly, the Daily Yomiuri said that the approval rating for the DPJ still fell behind that for the LDP. Its survey showed that the support rate for the LDP went up to 29.3 percent from 27.2 percent, higher than that for DPJ, which declined from 29.2 percent to 26.2 percent.
Source:Xinhua
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