Former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba overtook scandal-hit Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the best person to lead Japan, an opinion poll showed Tuesday.
Ishiba was seen as the most appropriate choice for prime minister by 20.4 percent of respondents to the poll conducted by the Sankei newspaper and FNN TV network, while 19.7 percent picked Abe. In a similar survey in December, Ishiba's 10.9 percent lagged behind the 34.5 percent who favored Abe.
With support for Abe's Cabinet nose-diving amid a series of gaffes and scandals, Ishiba has emerged in recent weeks as one of the strongest critics of the prime minister within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He told Fuji TV after the LDP suffered a heavy defeat in a Tokyo election this month that the party was in crisis, and he has questioned Abe's haste in pushing to revise the 70-year-old pacifist Constitution.
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