TOKYO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered another blow Thursday as a junior lawmaker submitted her letter of resignation following allegations she physically and verbally abused her secretary.
The intention to resign by Mayuko Toyota, a second-term lower house lawmaker, who has previously served as parliamentary vice education minister, comes just one day ahead of the start of campaigning for the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election.
Aside from the LDP now having to go head-to-head with a new assembly group established by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike in the July 2 metropolitan assembly election, the LDP has also had to contend with a number of scandals recently leading to a substantial drop in the support rate for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Toyota's scandal aside, Abe has been implicated in a transgression involving him allegedly using his influence to show favoritism to a friend of his in the government's selection of a new university department to be opened in a special deregulated zone.
The forced enactment recently of the controversial "conspiracy" law and the LDP-led bloc circumnavigating a legislative process in the upper house to ensure its enactment, has also incensed the public, who have been taking to the streets in their thousands to protest the law and the manner in which it was forcibly enacted.
Toyota's ordeal, now adding to the woes of the LDP, first came to light in the pages of the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho on Thursday, and alleged that on May 20, Toyota shouted at her secretary while she was sitting in the back seat of the car he was driving, and repeated struck him in the head and face.
According to Kyodo News, the magazine has uploaded an audio file to the internet which is purportedly a recording of the violent incident as it unfolds.
In the recording a woman can be heard hurling abuse at a man who she at one point refers to as "baldy."
He responds by telling her that he is driving the car and pleads with her to stop beating him.
Recent polls have showed the Cabinet's approval rating plummeted 10.5 points from May to 44.9 percent, while the disapproval rating for the Cabinet stood at 43.1 percent, up 8.8 points.
Of those that disapproved of the Cabinet, 41.9 percent said that Abe could not be trusted, while 73.8 percent of respondents said they remained unconvinced by the government's denial of the favoritism allegations.
The scandal-plagued LDP, hence, has moved swiftly to remove Toyota from the media and public spotlight.
"We want to do something about this quickly," a senior LDP member was quoted as saying Thursday, referring to Toyota's brisk resignation.
