By Michitaka Kaiya

8:00 JST, March 22, 2025

The atmosphere was far from uplifting when the Liberal Democratic Party held its annual convention at a Tokyo hotel on March 9.

In his speech as party president, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba referred to the LDP’s return to power in 2012 and said, “We want the LDP to be a party that humbly functions as a government and manages the Diet fairly. We were entrusted with power [back then] based on such a pledge. Once again, we want to be humble to the people.”

The LDP members present responded indifferently to his words.

One member of the House of Representatives commented: “All he does is talk like a critic. As the top leader, I can’t see what direction he will lead us in.”

A senior party official said, “The president’s speech at the party convention is an opportunity for the prime minister to get [the party] fired up for the national election, but the content of his speech was completely different, and the reaction from the audience was not very positive.”

Ishiba leads the LDP, whose heavy defeat in the lower house election last October left it as the head of a minority ruling coalition. To deal with a situation in which neither the budget bill nor any other bills can be passed without the approval of some of the opposition parties, the prime minister aimed for a “deliberative” Diet session in which he would listen carefully to the opposition parties’ arguments and try to build consensus. As a result, the fiscal 2025 budget bill, the biggest hurdle in the current Diet session,........

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