Boosting military spending may be Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's best hope of reviving his sinking popularity, but there is a catch, analysts say: paying for it with unpopular new taxes could undermine an already wobbly premiership.
About two-thirds of Japanese voters back a government plan for the country's biggest military build-up since World War Two, arming it withThat is more than double Kishida's approval rating, which has plummeted amid revelations about his ruling Liberal Democratic Party's ties to the controversial Unification Church and the resignation of three scandal-tainted ministers.
"From his perspective, he is engaged in a delicate balancing act," said Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. "If I had to bet, then I would probably bet against him surviving the entire calendar year next year." Yet only 20% of respondents to an October poll published by the Yomiuri newspaper, Japan's biggest daily, favoured tax increases to pay for increased defence spending, compared with 40% who backed government borrowing.
At a news conference on Saturday, Kishida, who needs an extra $30 billion a year for his defence plan once money from other reserves runs out, said Japan would pay for any spending shortfall with tax revenue rather than government bonds, which would expand national debt that is already more than twice the size of the economy.that the government would issue about 1.6 trillion yen in construction bonds for Defence Force facilities.
Many in Kishida's party are opposed to tax increases, including 70% of the LDP committee that has formulated much of Kishida's defence plan, according to Masahisa Sato, an upper house lawmaker and former deputy defence minister, who is one of the LDP's most vocal proponents of a stronger military.
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