Embattled Japanese premier Fumio Kishida dropped four cabinet ministers on Thursday, as he tried to limit the fallout from the biggest financial scandal his ruling party has faced in decades.
The ousted ministers included chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura in Kishida’s third cabinet shake-up in 16 months, as he looks to shore up sliding public ratings.
Former foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi replaced Matsuno while former justice minister Ken Saito took Nishimura’s post in the key changes, with several deputy ministers also axed.
Kishida does not need to call an election until October 2025 and a fractured opposition has historically struggled to make sustained inroads into the dominance of the LDP.
The dropped ministers all hail from the LDP’s most powerful faction that is at the centre of a criminal investigation into missing accounts.
But a poll on Thursday suggested that the clearout, 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.
Just 17 percent of respondents in the Jiji poll said they backed his administration, the lowest for any premier in more than a decade.
