Japan PM Kishida drops four cabinet ministers in bid to weather financial scandal

Fumio Kishida, the embattled Japanese premier, has dismissed four cabinet ministers.

This is happening as the premier works to contain the effects of the largest financial scandal to hit his ruling party in decades.

In Kishida’s third cabinet shuffle in sixteen months, he removed industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura and chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno in an attempt to boost his flagging public approval ratings.

Report says former foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will replace Matsuno in the critical role, coordinating government policy on the premier’s behalf, while former justice minister Ken Saito takes over from Nishimura.

The axed ministers all hail from the LDP’s most powerful faction that is at the centre of a criminal investigation into missing accounts. Several deputy ministers are also set to go.

Meanwhile, a poll suggested that the clear out, which media have speculated about for days, was unlikely to halt the slide in public support for Kishida, who has been dogged by a series of scandals since coming to office in October 2021.

The latest incident has drawn comparisons to the so-called recruit scandal of the late 1980s when accusations of insider trading forced the resignation of Prime Minister, Noboru Takeshita and several top government officials.

Report says the investigation centres on the LDP’s Abe faction, named for assassinated premier Shinzo Abe, and is checking if dozens of lawmakers benefited from fundraising events that kept millions of dollars off official party records,.

It will also examine if other LDP factions, including the one Kishida led until last week, are involved, the reports said.

The scandal has taken a further toll with the resignation of a top LDP official who oversees budget proposals, while media say Kishida is considering shelving plans for a trip to Brazil and Chile next month.

“Kishida’s popularity has really taken a hit, so whatever he does he can’t do much to improve that,” said Jun Iio, a specialist in Japanese politics at Tokyo’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

“He’s replacing his ministers while the government is still compiling its budget. That could cause further disruption, and on top of that, there’s no knowing if there might be more ministers who actually have similar problems,” he said.

Additionally, the political upheaval comes at a critical moment for the Bank of Japan, which is planning an exit from decades of ultra-low interest rates.

The scandal looking set to sideline heavyweights of the ruling party’s once-mighty faction favouring big monetary stimulus that could make the BOJ’s job easier.