TOKYO, April 27: Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda suffered a fresh blow on Sunday when the opposition won a by-election for a seat in parliament’s lower house.

The loss by the ruling bloc is likely to embolden opposition Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa to step up efforts to force an early general election and heighten dissatisfaction with Fukuda’s leadership in his own Liberal Democratic Party.

“This gives both him (Fukuda) and his party an excuse to say he should resign, but it doesn’t force him out,” said Steven Reed, a political science professor at Chuo University in Tokyo.

“It makes it very likely that they’ll replace him before the next general election if they can find a way to do so.” No general election need be held until September 2009, but some pundits say the prime minister could be forced to call one earlier to try to break the gridlock that is foiling efforts to address urgent matters from pensions to security.

Citing projections based on by-election exit polls, NHK television said former Democratic Party lawmaker Hideo Hiraoka was sure to defeat the LDP’s Shigetaro Yamamoto in Yamaguchi, central Japan. Official results were expected later.

As the first election for a lower-house seat since Fukuda took office in September, the Yamaguchi poll was widely portrayed as a referendum on his troubled administration.

Fukuda’s support rate has sunk to 25 per cent in some polls as he struggles to get policies through a divided parliament, where opposition parties control the upper house and can delay laws.—Reuters