Japan: PLD, ruling party, elects new leader, future Prime Minister

Published on : 09/29/2021 – 05:51

The Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, conservative right), party in power in Japan since 1955, chooses its new leader, Wednesday, September 29, in an internal election. Due to the absolute majority that the PLD has in the lower house of Parliament, the winner of the ballot is virtually guaranteed to take the head of the country as Prime Minister.

Outgoing Yoshihide Suga, unpopular in public opinion after a year in the top post, has decided not to run.

Wednesday’s poll will give one vote to each of the 382 PLD parliamentarians, and the votes of some 1.1 million party members will count for 382 additional votes. The elected members of the PLD vote from 1 p.m. (6 a.m. in France) in a hotel in the capital Tokyo. The results are expected in the afternoon.

If no candidate obtains a majority, the first two will face each other in the wake of a second round, which will give 382 votes to parliamentarians and one vote to each of the PLD’s branches in the 47 departments of Japan. The results would then be known at the end of the day.

The candidate who wins will be appointed Prime Minister after a vote on October 4 in Parliament, dominated by the PLD, and will lead his party to the battle of the legislative elections due to take place by November and for which he favorite share.

A former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the “Mr. vaccination” in the running

The internal election of the PLD is this time exceptionally close, in particular because most of the powerful factions of the party did not give instructions to vote to their members.

A total of four personalities are in the running, two men and two women, an unusual occurrence in a country which has never had a female prime minister and which has few prominent female personalities.

The race should be played out, according to various polls, between former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, 64, who lost to Yoshihide Suga last year, and the man who embodies the anti-Covid vaccination campaign in Japan, Taro Kono, 58, one of the archipelago’s most famous political figures.

Ultra-nationalist Sanae Takaichi, 60, was given third, and former minister Seiko Noda, 61 and known for her feminist positions, came last in polls of voting intentions.

The most popular candidate in public opinion is Taro Kono. A former Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs, he has been regarded for years as a likely candidate for the top post. Active on social networks, he favors a direct communication style that breaks with the cautious approach often favored by Japanese politicians. But he has also been criticized for his tendency to block overly critical voices through his Twitter account (where he has more than two million subscribers) and for intimidating officials, according to tabloids.

His main rival is Fumio Kishida, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017, who has promised to strengthen the economic stimulus measures linked to the pandemic if he is elected. Fumio Kishida has sought to capitalize on public discontent with the handling of the health crisis that has brought down the popularity of the Suga government. He highlighted his listening skills and invited the Japanese to share their requests and ideas with him.

Divergent views on social issues

Whoever wins, he will face a plethora of challenges, from driving a post-pandemic economic recovery to threats posed by North Korea and China.

Neither Fumio Kishida nor Taro Kono should radically change Japan’s foreign, economic or military policy.

They notably share the desire to strengthen security ties with the United States within the “Quad”, to preserve vital economic ties with China and to organize regular diplomatic summits.

They also denounced what they consider to be the failure of the “Abenomics”, the fiscal and monetary measures intended to support the economy and households put in place by Shinzo Abe, without however indicating what they intended to do.

But the two men have different views on social issues. Taro Kono supports allowing married couples to have different surnames, as well as legalizing same-sex marriage. Fumio Kishida was more cautious on these two subjects.

With AFP