Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso bounced back from dwindling popular support in recent surveys but challenges remained ahead of a general election which has to be held by fall.

Aso's springtime

The approval rating for Aso's Cabinet climbed 5.9 percentage points from late March to 29.6 percent, according to a Kyodo News poll released Wednesday. Another findings by the Nikkei Shimbun showed the rating rocketed 7 percentage points to 32 percent.

The approval rating for Aso's Cabinet was free-falling since winter last year as the Asia's second-largest economy sank into the worst post-war recession. It suffered another huge blow in February when it plunged to as low as 13.4 percent after former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa resigned on his drunk appearance at a G7 summit on financial crisis in Rome.

Even though Japan's economy is far from recovery, the government's proactive additional economic budget, which totaled 14.7 trillion yen (150 billion dollar), has won some support among Japanese, the Nikkei Shimbun believed. The extra budget, aimed to finance government stimulus measures, was submitted by the government to parliament Monday.

But a major reason for Aso's rise would be the fall of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) president Ichiro Ozawa, who is embroiled in a political fund-raising scandal that toppled his top aide Takanori Okubo.

In the latest Kyodo News survey, 65.5 percent of respondents wanted Ozawa to step down because of the scandal. It said 39.8 percent preferred Aso over Ozawa as prime minister, up 6.7 points from the March poll. By contrast, 26.1 percent chose Ozawa over Aso. While in January nearly 40 percent of respondents said they prefer Ozawa and only 27 percent chose Aso.

In this sense, some political critics said Ozawa was defeated by himself rather than Aso.

Unyielding opponents

However, crisis was never ending for Aso and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has nearly unbroken rule in Japan since the end of World War II.

Ozawa's DPJ received support from 29.7 percent respondents surveyed, still higher than the 29.4 percent for Aso's ruling conservative party.

Moreover, Aso's disapproval rating, though coming down, remained in an alerting level at 56.2 percent, nearly doubling the approval rating.

In terms of the proportional representation system in the next election for the House of Representatives, 30.8 percent of the respondents said they will vote for Aso's Liberal Democratic Party, while 37.9 percent said they will vote for the DPJ, maintaining the lead against the LDP in the category.

Ozawa himself was unyielding. He vowed to a May Day rally in Tokyo Wednesday that the "the DPJ will win the general election no matter how."

Even though the majority of people believed Ozawa should step down as head of DPJ, he had shown no sign of weakening in every public appearance. On Wednesday he kept lashing out at the weak points of Aso's economic stimulus plan, pointing out that the extra budget would be covered by more than 10 trillion yen (100 billion dollars) in government bonds and further upset the country 's finances.

"The Aso's government is so irresponsible that it has no resources and determination to help the country overcome the crisis," he told the rally.

(Xinhua News Agency May 1, 2009)