Fumio Kishida Set to Be Japan's Next PM after Winning Ruling Party LDP Election
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – 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.
The Diet will convene next Monday 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, The Straits Times reported.
Kishida, 64, edged out administrative reform and vaccination minister Taro Kono in two rounds of the election to become LDP president.
There were 429 votes at stake – the party’s 382 lawmakers and the 47 prefecture chapters which had one vote each.
Kishida won 257 ballots (249 from lawmakers and eight from prefecture chapters), defeating Kono who scored 170 votes (131 and 39).
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 got 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 had a say.
Kishida’s 256 votes comprised 146 lawmaker votes and 110 grassroots votes. Kono was just a vote behind, with 86 lawmaker votes and 169 grassroots votes.
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.