The “surrendering of the post” that Prime Minister Ishiba has fallen into has caused a hellstorm in the Diet.
Rookie lawmakers “didn’t expect this fiasco.”
It’s not over yet, is it?”
A little after 5:30 in the evening of November 7, a beautiful woman with a well-proportioned figure asked the reporters gathered in the doorway of the LDP headquarters in a flustered tone.
The woman, who arrived two and a half hours late for the meeting, was Senri Morishita, 43, a former TV personality and LDP Lower House Representative who was elected for the first time in the Tohoku block of the proportional representation. She was the only new candidate in the whole country, and the only one in second place on the list. Rushing into the elevator, she headed for Room 901, which had turned into a shuraba.
She said, “There were many things I did not do well. I deeply regret them and must apologize.”
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (67), who suffered a crushing defeat in the lower house election, bowed deeply.
Ishiba extended his scheduled one-hour meeting and apologized for three hours. At the round-table meeting, a total of 50 people spoke, many of them questioning the responsibility of Prime Minister Ishiba and the party’s executive branch. Shigeharu Aoyama, 72, a member of the House of Councillors, opened the discussion by saying that the prime minister should announce his resignation.
He said, “The budget will be compiled at the end of the year, and he should announce his resignation gracefully before that.
His anger did not subside even after the meeting ended, and in an interview, Aoyama barked, “I asked for his resignation clearly, and I was the first one to do so.
I was the only one who clearly asked for his resignation, but there were seven or eight people who agreed with me. When the Aso administration lost the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election, Mr. Ishiba pressed Taro Aso, 84, saying, ‘You should resign. When the Abe administration lost the Upper House election, he asked Shinzo Abe to resign. This time, he himself lost the general election. It is strange for anyone to think that he has not yet tendered his resignation. The whole world thinks so. It is the result of the general election.
The main reason for the outpouring of dissatisfaction was the party’s failure to pay 20 million yen, the same amount as the certified candidate, to the LDP party branch headed by an unapproved candidate. The LDP’s headwind increased when the “Shimbun Aka Banbai” (Newspaper Red Flag) reported the incident in the final stages of the election campaign.
