Japan parties clash as Prime Minister's support sags before poll

Japan's ruling and opposition camps clashed in parliament on Friday as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling camp began pushing through bills to try to revive his popularity before an upper house election just a month away.
Abe is struggling to cool voter anger over government mishandling of pension records that may be short-changing retirees, and public concern about political corruption.
But time is running out before the July 29 vote, which could affect whether he gets to keep his job. In the latest poll to confirm Abe's sagging popularity, a June 26-28 survey by the Yomiuri newspaper showed 34.4 percent of respondents backed his cabinet compared to 51.8 percent who did not. That was little changed from a poll carried out on June 5-7.
More voters intended to cast ballots for the main opposition Democratic Party than for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the upper house poll, the survey showed.
Asked which party they would back in a nation-wide proportional representation constituency, about 22 percent selected the Democrats against 21 percent for the LDP, while in prefectoral districts, 24 percent opted for the opposition party against 22 percent for the LDP, the newspaper said. Abe has already delayed the upper house election by a week in an effort to push through key bills and give voters time to cool off.
On Friday, the upper house enacted a law aimed at tightening controls on political funds, the first of four bills the LDP and its junior coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed New Komeito, want to pass by the end of this week.
The other legislation deals with the pensions fiasco and reform of the civil service system by revising the system of "amakudari", or "descent from heaven", in which former bureaucrats take cushy jobs at firms they once supervised. The "amakudari" system has long been viewed as a hotbed of corruption, but critics say the proposed reforms will do little to fix the problem.
The ruling coalition wants to enact the bills now although the parliament session is due to run until July 5 because lawmakers facing re-election are eager to start their unofficial campaigns. The upper house plenary session looked set to drag on into the early hours of Saturday to finish the job.