TOKYO (Sputnik) — Japan’s lower house speaker Tadamori Oshima on Thursday read out an order given by Emperor Akihito to dissolve the House of Representatives ahead of a snap election.
"The lower house has been dissolved in line with Article 7 of the Constitution," Oshima said at a televised plenary meeting of the national bicameral parliament, the National Diet.
The snap election will be held amid decreasing popularity of Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Even though the August 3 cabinet reshuffle has increased popular support for the government to nearly 50 percent, the approval rating of the conservative LDP party stands at 38 percent, according to a mid-September poll.
LDP has been hit by a series of scandals over Abe's favoritism allegations and a defeat by opposition candidates in mayoral voting in the city of Sendai in the northwestern Miyagi prefecture and the July election to the Tokyo metropolitan assembly.
