Tokyo Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead while delivering a campaign speech on Friday. On Sunday, his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is expected to win a major victory in Japan’s upper house elections.
According to the first projection of the TV channel NHK, she alone can win more than half of the 125 seats that were awarded in the partial election of the upper house.
Half of the House of Lords, now expanded to 248 seats, is re-elected every three years. Together with the smaller partner, the “New Justice Party”, the coalition can thus expand its absolute majority in the upper chamber, which must approve the decisions of the politically influential lower house.
Many experts had expected that Abe’s assassination could increase the LDP’s election chances. Because Abe was not just any head of government, but the architect of today’s Japan. He had ruled for almost nine years in two terms, repositioning Japan economically and, above all, geopolitically as an active actor for the previous world order and against China.
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The current strong election victory now allows Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to rule on many urgent economic, monetary and domestic policy issues. At the same time, the largest opposition party, the left-centrist Constitutional Democratic Party, and other left-wing parties are likely to continue to lose seats.
An important victory for Prime Minister Kishida
There will be no further elections for the next three years. Kishida can therefore try what he has not been able to do so far: to fill his slogan of a “new capitalism”, which increases the falling real incomes in Japan, with concrete measures.
The previous program, which the government passed in early June, still shied away from demands that might alienate the corporate world or the strong national-conservative wing around Abe.
>> Also read here: Here’s how Abe’s death could affect Japan
In terms of monetary policy, too, Kishida now has it in his hands to set his own economic policy signals. Abe’s chosen Fed Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who has been responsible for the Bank of Japan’s massive purchases of government bonds and low interest rates since 2013, must be replaced in 2023. But in Japan, criticism of his policy of sticking to Japan’s low interest rate policy despite inflation, a massive depreciation of the yen and global interest rate hikes is growing.
Abe posthumously faces the fulfillment of his life goal
But above all, the LDP now has the chance to carry out Abe’s actual political mission posthumously. During his lifetime, the longest-serving prime minister wanted to push through the project that his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi had failed to implement as head of government: a revision of the constitution written in 1947 by the American occupying forces.
On Sunday, the voters are expected to give the coalition and two other supporters of a constitutional amendment a clear two-thirds majority in the upper house. This is necessary in the lower and upper houses in order to present change proposals for an all-important referendum.
His great goal could be fulfilled posthumously.
(Photo: AP)
The focus of the constitutional reformers is to change the pacifist Article 9 in such a way that Japan’s “self-defense forces” are upgraded to a real military. This would be an important step in expanding Japan’s role in the military alliance with the US regionally. Because so far the constitution forbids the country from owning war potential.
The military is therefore called “Self-Defense Forces” and for a long time was limited exclusively to its own national defense. Abe continued to expand the field of application by reinterpreting the constitution, but repeatedly encountered constitutional and political limits.
But with the growing fear of a more expansive China, the mood in the country is changing. In surveys, a majority of participants are already in favor of raising the defense budget well above the previous one percent of gross domestic product. Under pressure from the Abe wing, the LDP has even targeted a doubling of economic power to two percent.
Success for right-wing populists
To do this, however, the LDP must make common cause with the second election winner on Sunday, who could either pose a threat to the governing party in the long term or become the new coalition partner: the right-wing populist Japan Innovation Party. It is currently expanding nationwide from its regional center in Osaka and will definitely gain seats in the upper house as well.
According to previous projections, it could even become the third strongest force after the Democrats. It is thus increasingly developing into an alternative for the large camp of the resigned who have not voted for years. Even in lower house elections, the turnout has been well below 60 percent for years – in the current upper house elections it was probably even less.
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