Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's reported plan to dissolve the Lower House for a snap general election as early as next month is clearly driven by partisan interests to maximum the wins for his ruling coalition by holding the race while the opposition parties remain unprepared. It might be argued that's exactly what a prime minister is allowed to do with his "exclusive" right to dissolve the lower chamber at the timing of his choice. Still, Abe needs to make clear to voters for what he would be seeking a fresh mandate by holding yet another snap election now — a time when North Korea's repeated provocations of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests demand an uninterrupted government response.
For Abe, it may be the right time to go to the polls. Popular approval ratings of his administration, which plummeted to its record lows in early summer due to a series of scandals that hit his government and the Liberal Democratic Party, have been picking up again after he reshuffled his Cabinet in August. The top opposition Democratic Party, under its new chief Seiji Maehara, is in a mess with a continuing exodus of its lawmakers and sluggish popular support. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's drive to take her own fledgling political force into national politics, after its landslide in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly race in July battered the LDP into devastating losses, may have little time to field enough candidates to pose a serious threat to Abe's coalition in the Diet.
By dissolving the Lower House at the beginning of an extraordinary Diet session to open Sept. 28 — as he is widely reported to be contemplating — Abe can also forestall attempts by the opposition to grill his administration further over the scandals, including the Kake Gakuen case, in which a school operator headed by his close friend was chosen under the government's deregulatory project to open the first veterinary science department at a university in more than 50 years, raising allegations of favoritism. Criticism that Abe is trying to dodge these issues may fly in the face of political calculations that the chances of his coalition would be better by holding the election sooner rather than later.