Kishida wins LDP poll, to succeed Suga as Japan’s Prime Minister


Fumio Kishida won 257 ballots, defeating Taro Kono who scored 170 votes. - Bloomberg

TOKYO (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): Japan’s former foreign minister Fumio Kishida is set to be sworn in as Yoshihide Suga’s successor as Prime Minister, after he won the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s internal election on Wednesday (Sept 29).

The Diet will convene next Monday (Oct 4) for lawmakers to elect Japan’s 100th Prime Minister. The LDP coalition has a majority in both chambers of Parliament, making the process all but a formality.

Kishida, 64, edged out administrative reform and vaccination minister Taro Kono over two rounds in Wednesday’s election.

With 429 votes at stake in the second round – the party’s 382 lawmakers and the 47 prefecture chapters each get one vote– Kishida won 257 ballots, defeating Kono who scored 170 votes.

This came after the first round of voting that featured two other candidates – former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi, 60, and former gender equality minister Seiko Noda, 61.

In this round, each of the 382 lawmakers get one vote, with the remaining 382 ballots split among the 47 prefecture chapters where the party’s 1.1 million rank-and-file members also get a say.

Kishida’s 256 votes comprised 146 lawmaker votes and 110 grassroots votes.

Kono, who is also administrative reform minister and former foreign and defence minister, scored 86 lawmaker votes and 169 grassroots votes, making a total of 255.

In third place was former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi, 60, who scored 188 votes (114 lawmaker and 74 grassroots votes), with former gender equality minister Seiko Noda, 61, ranking last with 63 votes (34 lawmaker and 29 grassroots votes).

Kishida will lead the LDP into a general election that must be held by November, with four-year Lower House lawmaker terms set to expire on Oct 21.

But the jury is out as to how the electorate will vote given that Kishida’s victory goes against popular opinion. Kono has regularly topped media opinion surveys as the public’s choice for their preferred next Prime Minister.

A poll by Nikkei and TV Tokyo showed Kono as the preferred choice of 46 per cent of respondents, and 45 per cent in a separate Mainichi Shimbun survey.

Kishida came in second with 17 per cent in the Nikkei poll, and ranked third behind Takaichi in the Mainichi survey.

Kono’s maverick reformist credentials have made many senior LDP politicians very uneasy, though he has wide popular appeal for his willingness to break tradition and ability to cut through red tape to get things done.

Yet this was not enough to defeat Kishida, whose support among the LDP lawmakers stem from how he is a more traditional LDP politician who is less willing to rock the boat.

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