Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made some lasting changes to bolster the power of the prime minister’s office, but his political longevity is mainly due to strong allies, weak enemies and good luck – a hat trick successors may find hard to emulate. Abe, 63, is in the midst…
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made some lasting changes to bolster the power of the prime minister’s office, but his political longevity is mainly due to strong allies, weak enemies and good luck – a hat trick successors may find hard to emulate.
Abe, 63, is in the midst of what may be the worst political crisis since his return to office in December 2012, as doubts swirl over suspected cronyism in a land deal with a school operator linked to his wife, Akie.
He has denied he or his wife intervened in the sale. But the affair could dash Abe’s hopes of a third three-year term as governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president from September, leading to a leadership change sooner than expected.
Among the reforms Abe made was the launch in 2014 of a cabinet bureau giving him and his close aide, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, authority to appoint hundreds of senior officials, tightening their grip on the bureaucracy.
That was the latest in a series of moves over the past two decades to centralise power in the Kantei, as the prime minister’s office is known.
“Abe is the culmination of changes that began earlier that made clear where the buck stops,” said Gerry Curtis, emeritus professor at New York’s Columbia University. “After Abe, how the institutions work depends on the individual.”
Abe and Suga have made skilful use of their increased clout. Even before the new system was adopted, for example, Abe named an ex-diplomat sympathetic to his drive to loosen the limits of the pacifist constitution on the military to a post in charge of interpreting that charter.
