Japan’s ruling party to pick new leader, successor to PM Kishida next month Leave a comment

The winner of the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election in September will also become the next prime minister.

Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is set to elect its new leader and the country’s next prime minister in September.

The party’s announcement on Tuesday came after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s sudden decision last week to step down amid low approval ratings and a corruption scandal within the LDP.

The internal election must be held by the end of September, which marks the end of Kishida’s three-year term, and will include the party’s parliamentarians and its 1.1 million dues-paying members.

The winner will be the head of the LDP and the next prime minister as the party and its smaller coalition partner control Japan’s two-chamber parliament.

Campaigning to become the next LDP president will begin on September 12 and a vote will take place two weeks later, a party official told the AFP news agency.

The LDP’s election committee chief, Ichiro Aisawa, said the party takes seriously the loss of public trust due to the fraud scandal and has set a 15-day campaign period, instead of the usual 12 days, so voters have more time to study the candidates’ policies.

The controversy over the LDP centred around unreported political funds raised through tickets sold for party events. It involved more than 80 LDP lawmakers, mostly belonging to a major party faction previously led by assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Aisawa urged candidates to make their campaign as frugal as possible, “taking into consideration the public criticisms over money and politics”.

Former Economic Security Minister Takayuki Kobayashi, 49, was the first to announce his candidacy on Monday.

Other possible contenders include former Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, 43, three of the party’s female veterans – Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi and former Gender Equality Minister Seiko Noda – as well as former Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Each candidate needs support from 20 party politicians to run.

On the international front, however, Kishida, 67, has been praised for siding with Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, and for forging a stronger defence policy to counter China, with the support of the United States.