Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a strong mandate in the election on October 22. His ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), together with its political partner, a Buddhist-linked party Komeito, secured a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of the Diet, or parliament. Turnout, however, was the second lowest on record.
Mr Abe came to office in late 2012. If he remains four more years as as Prime Minister, he will become the country’s longest serving head of government since the Second World War.
The LDP secured 284 seats of the 465 seats contested, far beyond the simple majority that Mr Abe had set as his victory line. Komeito won 29 seats.
The LDP benefited from the opposition’s weakness. The Democratic Party splintered into the conservative Party of Hope, the leftwing Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and numerous independents running across the country.
The CDP took 55 seats, becoming the second-largest political force in the house. The upstart Party of Hope set up by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, which briefly emerged as a viable alternative to the LDP, didn’t pose a serious threat to the ruling party, winning only 50 seats. Ms Koike declined to run herself, which fuelled a slide in the polls as the party was left without a standard-bearer. She spent election day in Paris attending a climate change meeting. Ms Koike also made a mistake by imposing an ideological test on candidates for the Party of Hope, rejecting the more liberal former Democrats.
Mr Abe has now the opportunity to achieve its lifelong political goal of changing the country’s pacifist constitution, adopted when Japan was still under US occupation. Mr Abe wants to change Article 9 of the constitution to recognise Japan’s armed services, known as the Self-Defence Forces, as the proper army. Three years ago, he secured a reinterpretation of the constitution, which allows Japan to come to the aid of its allies if they are attacked. Apart from China and South Korea, where many still harbour bitter memories of Japanese aggression in the 20th century, few countries fear a revival of Japanese militarism.
A constitutional amendment must be approved by both houses of the Diet and endorsed by a simple majority in a national referendum. Public opinion, however, now is not in favour of constitutional revision.
Mr Abe is also likely to reinforce his economic programme, dubbed Abenomics, aimed at ending Japan’s two decades of on-and-off deflation and restoring economic vitality. Despite five years of stimulus measures and unemployment at less than 3 per cent, inflation remains stuck close to zero.
Pressure is growing on the government to tackle Japan’s swollen debt (more than double the size of the economy) and overhaul the labour market to replenish the rapidly aging workforce. Mr Abe has promised to raise consumption tax, from 8 per cent to 10 per cent, as already planned in 2019, but to spend some of the revenue on free childcare and social security. The government, therefore, will almost certainly miss its goal of balancing the primary budget – before interest payments – by 2020.
North Korea, which is rapidly increasing its nuclear capacity, despite increasingly tough UN sanctions, has fired missiles over Japan in recent months. Tokyo has endorsed US President Donald Trump’s hostile rhetoric on North Korea, but has no appetite for military options.
DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro
