The main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will continue to concentrate on painting gaffe-prone Mr Yoshiro Mori, the Prime Minister, as unfit to hold power as the campaigning for s tomorrow's general election enters its final stages.
"We're pretty much focused on negative campaigning," a DPJ election worker admitted to The Irish Times. But it appears that the focus on Mr Mori has yet to dent seriously the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Though the latest Kyodo News opinion poll shows that there are now more undecided voters than LDP supporters, the ruling parties still have a solid lead and look set for victory.
There still remains the possibility, however, that a high turnout of unaffiliated voters, who usually cast their ballots against the LDP, could cause an upset.
DPJ leader Mr Yukio Hatoyama accused Mr Mori's LDP late last night of deliberately keeping the Prime Minister away from what had been billed as a leadership debate on a popular Asahi television news programme for fear that he would make another embarrassing slip-up. Mr Mori has been under attack for a series of verbal blunders since replacing the late Mr Keizo Obuchi on April 5th as head of the ruling tripartite coalition.
Leading LDP official Mr Shizuka Kamei, who appeared instead of Mr Mori on the television debate, defended his leader's slips of the tongue, saying that some of them were meant in jest.
Mr Hatoyama, who spent yesterday campaigning in prefectures north of Tokyo before returning to the capital, told voters they would have to swallow "the bitter pill of harsh policies" if the nation is to recover from economic stagnancy and a crippling debt load.
In what many commentators view as sabotaging any chance that the DPJ might wrest power from the LDP, Mr Hatoyama's party is running on the unprecedented election promise to raise taxes for almost all workers to help reduce the debt.
The chiefs of the three ruling parties will campaign together in the Tokyo area today in a show of unity aimed at pushing the message that a vote for them is a vote for stability.
The LDP vows to continue massive public works projects, starting with the release of a 500 billion-yen reserve for such building schemes if it gets re-elected.
This would be good news for the thousands of construction firms around the country - traditional friends of the LDP - who employ some 10 per cent of the workforce and many of whom rely on the projects for survival.
The Japanese Communist Party, which is neck and neck with the Buddhist-backed ruling Komei Party for third place, with poll ratings of just over 4 per cent, has vowed to cut public works projects by half and use the savings for welfare programmes. The Social Democratic Party's leader, Ms Takako Doi, whose personal popularity is far higher than her s four party's 4 per cent ratings, is set to continue today driving home the message that the SDP will most staunchly defend the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which she maintains the government wants to revise.