Early elections in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he will dissolve the lower house on September 28: as a result, the country will be called to vote within the next 40 days. The natural deadline for the legislature would have been December 2018. According to the Kyodo news agency, the government coalition's plans are to bring the Japanese to the polls on October 22.
Abe intends to take advantage of the opposition's moment of weakness to obtain a majority that will facilitate his reform plan, especially in terms of security and defense in the light of the North Korean crisis.
Precisely the threats from Pyongyang have reunited the voters around the leader and the government, who want to give Japan a greater military reaction capability. According to a recent poll, the Japanese approve of Abe's hard line on North Korea.
According to the Nikkei business newspaper, 44% of voters would vote for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, while only 8% would be in favor of the Democratic Party, the main opposition formation, which criticized the choice of early elections supporting that the Prime Minister just wants to divert attention away from the scandals in which he is involved. In particular, an embarrassing affair in which he and his wife were accused of helping a personal friend set up a school of disputed methods.
