Former Japanese foreign minister Kishida to become new prime minister

Tokyo, September 30 (BNA) Former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida is set to become the country’s new prime minister after winning Wednesday’s presidential election for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Yoshihide is expected to succeed Suga as Japan’s prime minister on Monday, based on a LDP majority in the lower house of parliament. The 64-year-old beat out Taro Kono, the minister for the coronavirus vaccination campaign, for the top party position in the run-off.

dpa reported that Suga threw in the towel as Japan’s leader after just one year in power after receiving much criticism for his handling of the coronavirus crisis and his unpopular decision to press ahead with the Olympics despite the pandemic.

Kishida will have to work quickly to improve the party’s tarnished image among the Japanese public, with lower house elections scheduled for November.

Kishida, who hails from the city of Hiroshima and is of political descent, was previously pacifist on foreign policy issues. But he has taken a more hawkish tone recently, in a possible attempt to secure Conservative approval over influential former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Kishida wants to strengthen Japan’s defense and expand the military budget. Like his predecessors, he supports Japan’s close security alliance with the United States and wants to create a counterweight to China’s growing power, along with democratic partners in Europe and Asia.

His economic policy focuses on “new capitalism” to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

After his victory, Kishida announced a $1 billion economic stimulus package by the end of the year to support the economy, and vowed that he would do everything in his power to deal with the fallout from the pandemic.

Kishida is close to Nippon Kaiji, a powerful nationalist lobby group, which favors nuclear power and wants to promote clean energy technologies to create new growth areas. He wants to boost the economy devastated by the coronavirus with a big stimulus package.

Ultimately, Abe’s foreign and economic policy legacy is on the line after his many years in power. The right-wing conservative still wields significant influence in the party and supported another candidate, former Interior Minister, Sana Takaishi.

It remains to be seen if Kishida can get out of Abe’s shadow. The former prime minister was driven by a sentimental kind of nationalism, seeking to restore Japan’s pride. He had a close relationship with former US President Donald Trump, and moved his party and country to the right.

Before the runoff was due, there were two other candidates for the top job: the staunchly conservative Takeshi, and the more liberal former minister for gender equality, Seiko Noda.

While Kono’s party base favored the “vaccination tsar”, Kishida was seen as a frontrunner among the LDP legislators.

HF