It is widely viewed that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be re-elected as president of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in its leadership race in September 2018, grabbing a chance to become Japan’s longest-serving leader. But a possible failure in the process of pursing his long-cherished
It is widely viewed that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be re-elected as president of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in its leadership race in September 2018, grabbing a chance to become Japan’s longest-serving leader.
But a possible failure in the process of pursing his long-cherished goal of achieving the first-ever amendment to Japan’s pacifist Constitution could deal a blow to Abe and weaken his re-election prospects in the year, seen as otherwise eventless in Japanese politics, political experts say.
In 2017, the 63-year-old prime minister saw his approval ratings plunge at one point in early summer due to favoritism allegations leveled at him, but then consolidated power after the LDP won a landslide victory in the lower house election in October.
In a historic move, Abe’s administration enacted a law enabling Emperor Akihito, 84, to abdicate, making him the first living emperor to retire in around two centuries.
In diplomacy and security, Abe succeeded in forging close ties with U. S. President Donald Trump, who took office in January, and earned a reputation to some extent due to his hard-line stance on North Korea, which continues with its nuclear and missile development.
Without any national elections scheduled in 2018, all eyes will be on the LDP’s leadership contest in the autumn.
Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has been viewed as a leading candidate to be Abe’s successor. It has even been rumored that a “peaceful transfer of power” would take place from Abe to Kishida.
But the 60-year-old LDP policy chief remains low-key despite his more than four-year tenure in the key ministerial post, during which he was involved in realizing former U. S. President Barack Obama’s historic Hiroshima visit.
Hitoshi Komiya, an associate professor of contemporary Japanese history at Aoyama Gakuin University, took a negative stance on Kishida’s appointment as party head, given that an upper house election is scheduled in July 2019. “Lawmakers tend to prefer a leader who can appeal to voters to win the election,” he said.
Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiko Noda, 57, and former LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba, 60, make no secret of their desire to throw their hats into the ring. But it is unclear whether they could muster the support of 20 party lawmakers required to run in the race since Noda does not belong to any intraparty group and Ishiba’s faction is a small one.
