Voting is due to take place on 27 September. There are currently seven candidates for a first-ever non-factional showdown in response to the fundraising bribery scandal involving a group of Liberal Democratic Party MPs. A run-off is almost certain to be necessary. The opposition is also reorganising ahead of the upcoming general election.
Tokyo (/Agencies) – Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi has announced her candidacy for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to replace Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who announced in recent weeks that he would step down due to a series of corruption scandals within the party. Conventionally, the president of the majority party also assumes the role of prime minister. So far, seven candidates have been presented to compete in the internal elections on September 27. The nominations must be formalized before September 12, so it is likely that other political figures will present their candidacy in the coming days.
Sanae Takaichi, close to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a supporter of an aggressive fiscal policy, has the support of the deputies of the more conservative camp. “With strategic fiscal spending we can increase employment and income, increasing consumer confidence and securing income without raising tax rates,” she said today at a press conference. In 2021 Takaichi came third in the internal party elections.
According to the commentatorsPrime Minister Kishida has sought to remedy the scandal over illicit fundraising by one wing of the party by ending the system of factions and internal negotiations, making it harder to predict who might prevail.
In order to win, an absolute majority of the votes is required, otherwise a second round is expected, which, given the large number of candidates, is considered almost certain. At the moment, the best-placed candidates are Takayuki Kobayashi and Shinjiro Koizumi, both young former ministers, the first of Economic Security and the second of Environment.
Kobayashi comes from the conservative wing of the party and had no difficulty in obtaining dozens of consensuses. For many deputies, this 49-year-old, nicknamed “Kobahawk”, who has proposed less severe measures against the legislators involved in the bribery scandal, could represent the young and fresh image that the party needs at the moment, but he is a figure little known by public opinion. And the future president of the LDP will have to lead the party until the general elections that could be held already in October.
By contrast, Koizumi, 43, the son of former Prime Minister Junichiro, is a well-known face in politics, not least for his off-hand comments. He once declared that solving climate change “has to be fun, it has to be cool, it has to be sexy.” However, he has received support from former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (who was forced to resign after just one year in office), who could pull the strings of his administration from behind the scenes.
Highly regarded by the public, Shigeru Ishiba, 67, a former defence minister, has shown that he has nothing to do with the recent scandals. However, he is not equally appreciated by his colleagues and many still consider him a traitor because he left the LDP in favour of another party in the mid-1990s.
Toshimitsu Motegi, 68, the party’s secretary-general, was another favourite before the scandal broke, as he led the LDP’s third-largest faction. The risk is that he might appear too closely associated with the “old guard”.
At the opposite end of the political spectrum is Taro Kono, the digital minister who was a candidate for prime minister and is considered a maverick. He is also not particularly popular among his LDP colleagues (who have in fact tried to assign him marginal positions), but he could take some important votes away from the front-runners.
Continuing along the political line of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is Yoshimasa Hayashi, 63, the chief cabinet secretary, who, like another candidate, Ken Saito, the minister of economy, trade and industry, probably put forward his candidacy to give himself a good starting position for negotiations within the new government. The only other woman in the running, but who has not yet formalised her candidacy, is Yoko Kamikawa, 71, the current foreign minister. She presents herself as a respectable figure, but is still too closely linked to Kishida.
The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) will also elect a new president on Sept. 23 from a field of four candidates: former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, party leaders Yukio Edano, 60, and Kenta Izumi, 50, and first-term House of Representatives lawmaker Harumi Yoshida, 52. In a recent debate, all agreed that the CDP is unlikely to win a general election (the party has the support of 12 percent of the Japanese population) and preferred to focus on ways to work with the LDP on different policies.
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