After assuming the office of prime minister on Oct. 1, Shigeru Ishiba broke a number of promises he made during the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election and set up an absurdly accelerated snap election that turned into a train wreck for the party.
Once again breaking a number of commitments, he then set up a highly abbreviated special Diet session simply to get himself reelected so that he could go to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Lima and the Group of 20 in Rio de Janeiro. That came at the cost of handing the chairs of eight major committees to opposition parties. Before his snap election, they were all in the hands of the LDP.
He has now been forced to delay until next year a cybersecurity bill that was seen by many in the nation and abroad as highly critical to Japan’s national security. This delay is due to the limited time left this year to deal with the political reform bills he has promised, as well as the grilling in the Lower House Budget Committee now chaired by the opposition for the first time in 30 years. He will also need to get both a supplementary budget passed by the close of the session on Dec. 21 and the 2025 fiscal year national budget within the month of January.
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