When taking office any leader hopes fora honey moon period that will give him the time and political capital to acomplish some of their key aims, and in so doing generate more public support and momentum to keep pushing their agenda forward.  Just how long the honey moony will last for the new Japanese prime minister Fukuda is hard to say.  He may recieve the benefit6 pf the doubt and get several months.  Or the public could keep him on a short leash and it might last a week or two.  As of right now the indicators seem to be pointing toward a short honey moon for Fukuda.

From the Yomiuri Shimbun: Fukuda Cabinet approval rating at 58%

      Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's newly formed Cabinet recorded an approval rating of 57.5 percent, according to a nationwide Yomiuri Shimbun survey.

      The telephone poll of 1,557 eligible voters, conducted Tuesday night through Wednesday, showed 27.3 percent of 926 people giving valid responses disapproved of the Cabinet.

       Among those saying they approved of the Cabinet, most said they did so because they felt it had a "sense of stability."

       The approval rating for the Fukuda Cabinet is the fourth highest recorded in a poll taken immediately after a cabinet has been formed, following the 87.1 percent recorded for Junichiro Koizumi, 71.9 percent for Morihiro Hosokawa and 70.3 percent for Shinzo Abe. Similar surveys have been conducted since the Cabinet of Masayoshi Ohira took office in December 1978.

     While the poll numbers are promising they must be considered in the light that the recently departed abe started with even higher approval ratings that soon came crashing down to earth.  With this sort of thing one just has to watch and wait.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 03:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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