It is specious to keep conducting popularity polls within a mere two months of the return of the Liberal Democratic Party to power. The eagerness to push out these vacuous statistics is beginning to sound suspiciously more like a sponsored advertisement than a meaningful or objective evaluation.
No indication is given of the number or makeup of those polled, and no guarantee is given of the impartiality or prejudice of the pollees. Is it any surprise that a government recently elected by a landslide should still be popular?
The government has suffered no major crises, no tsunami, no earthquakes and no nuclear disasters. It has bullied the supposedly independent Bank of Japan, arguably manipulated the exchange system and just executed three criminals.
The new leaders are basking in the rebound from the disarray they caused in their erstwhile opposition, leaving the public nobody else to support. So, maybe the real question should be, why hasn't the ruling government received 100 percent support?
Perhaps that's because real issues in society — such as improving social services and achieving gender parity — have not been addressed. If anything, the poor and the helpless will be left worse off than before with women as the eternal second-class citizenry, disjointing Japan even further from the global reality of fairness that most advanced societies have long sought to achieve.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.