TOKYO – Japanese voters gave a stinging rebuke to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a general election on October 27, with results reflecting a hung parliament.

A special Diet session must be held within 30 days of the election to elect a prime minister, according to the constitution. But whether this will again be Mr. Ishiba, who only took office on October 1, is a big question mark.

It is clear, however, that the 67-year-old is on very shaky ground after seriously misreading public anger over a slush fund scandal when he gambled on a chance to call a snap election a year before the terms of the House of Commons lawmakers were set to expire.

Final results won’t come until early Oct. 28, but preliminary results show the LDP-Komeito coalition, which had 279 seats in the dissolved parliament, will fall short of the 233 seats needed for a majority in the 465-seat lower house.

According to a tally by public broadcaster NHK at 12.45pm (11.45pm in Singapore), the LDP had secured 170 seats and Komeito, 22, for a total of 192 seats.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) won 134 seats, with another 81 held by smaller opposition groups and independents. Another 59 seats remained undeclared.

Voter turnout was around 53.7 percent, according to Kyodo News calculations.

The election results were extremely damning for the LDP, with a string of former cabinet ministers ousted, including former Economic Revival Minister Akira Amari, 75, former Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura, 70, and former Olympic Minister Tamayo Marukawa, 53.

Mr. Ishiba, who retained his Tottori District No. 1 seat, said it was clear that the LDP has not received the voters’ forgiveness and understanding regarding the slush fund scandal. But he added that he had no intention of resigning as prime minister.

“It’s a very tough situation and we’re being judged extremely harshly,” he said. “Across the country, the debate focused on the scandal rather than on key policy issues such as diplomacy, national security and social security.”

The CDP grew in strength from the 98 seats it had previously held, and secretary-general Junya Ogawa said it would be a “major turning point in politics” if the LDP-Komeito coalition failed to retain its majority.

“We must prepare to take on a greater responsibility than before,” he said.

The prime minister had set a simple majority of 233 seats for the LDP-Komeito coalition as the target for the election. The public’s refusal to give him this mandate would increase pressure within the LDP for him to resign, given that he was elected party leader under difficult conditions.

His main rival in the LDP leadership election, former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, said on Oct. 27 after retaining his seat in the Nara No. 2 district: “My feeling of wanting to lead the nation someday is unchanged.”

He would also have to fight tooth and nail for political survival, with options such as bringing independent lawmakers into the fold, or engaging in awkward power-sharing arrangements with other conservative opposition parties such as the ascendant Democratic People’s Party (DPFP) and the Japan Innovation Party ( better known as Nippon Ishin no Kai).

If all these avenues were closed, he could become Japan’s shortest-lived post-war prime minister, beating the record of 54 days currently held by Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, who led Japan from August to October 1945.

Nippon Ishin leader Nobuyuki Baba said on October 27 that he was “not at all thinking” about working with the LDP. DPFP leader Yuichiro Tamaki, meanwhile, said the party “maybe” cooperate with the LDP, but only on an issue-by-issue basis.

There is also a slim chance that a clutch of splinter opposition parties could coalesce around the leadership of former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, 67, who now heads the CDP, to make up the numbers for a parliamentary majority.

Mr Noda was riding a wave of discontent over the LDP’s handling of a slush fund scandal, in which dozens of lawmakers were found to have kept millions of yen in fundraising income off the books. He told crowds that “the best way of political reform was a change of government”.

A hung parliament would be reminiscent of Japan’s political landscape in 1993, when the LDP relinquished power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. But the fragile coalition of eight opposition parties collapsed after a year.

Political leaders made a desperate plea to win votes since campaigning began on October 15. A tally by Jiji News Agency showed that together they traveled a distance of 84,000km – enough to circle the world twice – hoping to push their candidates across the border.

Experts said the political uncertainty would have ramifications for domestic politics.

“The future is chaotic, and the LDP will find it very difficult to manage parliamentary business or even implement policy,” Dr Mikitaka Masuyama of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies told The Straits Times. “It would be another time of compromise, with a politics of indecision.”

Sophia University political scientist Koichi Nakano told ST that the result should be the chastisement of a party that appears to have taken its dominance for granted.

“The LDP is like the Titanic – it’s a big ship that takes time to make a turn,” he said. “The LDP tried to make amends through half-assed measures, but it was all too little, too late.”