{"id":48267,"date":"2017-10-23T07:19:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T07:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=48267"},"modified":"2017-10-23T07:19:13","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T07:19:13","slug":"japan-election-vindicates-shinzo-abe-as-his-party-wins-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/japan-election-vindicates-shinzo-abe-as-his-party-wins-big.html","title":{"rendered":"Japan Election Vindicates Shinzo Abe as His Party Wins Big"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan Election Vindicates Shinzo Abe as His Party Wins Big<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Japan Election Vindicates Shinzo Abe as His Party Wins Big:- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan won a commanding majority for his party in parliamentary elections on Sunday, reported NHK, the public broadcaster, fueling his hopes of revising the nation\u2019s pacifist Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

NHK said that Mr. Abe\u2019s governing Liberal Democratic Party and its allies had overcome challenges from upstart rivals to capture two-thirds of the seats in the lower house of Parliament. Final results will be delayed until later on Monday because a typhoon that battered Japan on Sunday prevented votes from being counted in 12 precincts. But with the majority of votes counted, the Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner had won enough seats to reach the two-thirds mark.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pre-election opinion polls had shown lukewarm support for the prime minister\u2019s policies and competition from a party founded by Tokyo\u2019s popular governor, Yuriko Koike, as well as another new center-left party.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Mr. Abe, the results were a vindication of his strategy to call a snap election a year earlier than expected, and they raised the possibility that he would move swiftly to try to change the Constitution to make explicit the legality of the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan\u2019s military is known.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Constitution, in place since 1947, calls for the renunciation of war, and Mr. Abe said in May that it should be amended to remove any doubt about the military\u2019s legitimacy, a view he reiterated on Sunday evening.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amending the Constitution requires the support of two-thirds of both houses of Parliament. Mr. Abe\u2019s party and its allies had those numbers before Sunday\u2019s elections, but the prime minister\u2019s political woes earlier this year, along with the public\u2019s doubts about a constitutional change, created the possibility that he would lose the supermajority in the lower house.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even with the votes he needs in Parliament, Mr. Abe now must persuade the public, as any constitutional change needs to be approved by a majority of voters. Polls have shown that voters are split on whether they would approve such a measure.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think you\u2019ll see the conversation revolve all around what is doable,\u201d said Sheila A. Smith, a Japan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. \u201cThe bargaining is what is interesting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s parliamentary victory could also embolden Mr. Abe to run next year for a third term as leader of the Liberal Democrats. If he won he would be Japan\u2019s longest-serving prime minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the results were a setback for Ms. Koike, who started her new party, Kibou no To, or Party of Hope, with great fanfare just hours before Mr. Abe called the early election last month. After she decided not to run for office, voters lost interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to clearly say that this is a total defeat,\u201d Ms. Koike said in comments to NHK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysts said Mr. Abe\u2019s victory did not represent an endorsement of his platform so much as a lack of strong alternatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAbe\u2019s reading was right that this was the right timing because the opposition was not ready,\u201d said Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to Washington. \u201cPeople have no other choices, really.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Abe\u2019s public approval ratings dipped below 30 percent over the summer as he was dogged by a series of scandals, and opinion polls taken during the campaign found that more voters disapproved of Mr. Abe\u2019s hawkish strategy toward North Korea than approved of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an Abe conundrum,\u201d said Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo. Mr. Abe is a candidate \u201cwho is basically unpopular with voters, whose policies are not particularly popular, who doesn\u2019t get high marks for leadership, and yet he keeps winning in elections,\u201d Mr. Kingston said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Koike, after starting her own party, probably helped Mr. Abe by setting off a further split in the opposition. The leading opposition Democratic Party initially offered to free all of its candidates to run under the banner of Ms. Koike\u2019s party. But after she said she would submit candidates to a litmus test and require them to sign a loyalty pledge, the left wing of the Democrats split off and formed yet another new party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, which gained momentum during the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

In comments to NHK, Ms. Koike said she regretted her \u201cchoice of words\u201d in excluding candidates from her party. \u201cRather than an alternative, the party became a target of people\u2019s criticism,\u201d she said. NHK said that the Party of Hope won fewer seats than the Constitutional Democratic Party did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysts said that since Japan\u2019s electoral system was based on awarding victories to candidates who get the most votes in a constituency, the proliferation of parties favored the incumbent Liberal Democrats, who have dominated Japanese politics for most of Japan\u2019s postwar era.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the rival parties of the L.D.P. are divided, the L.D.P. wins,\u201d said Koichi Nakano, a political-science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. With two new parties forming just weeks before the election, Professor Nakano said, \u201cbasically people got confused.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The election did little to change Japan\u2019s record as one of the worst in the world for female political representation. Fewer than one in five candidates for the lower house were women, and projections early Monday morning showed that about one in 10 of the winners were women.<\/span><\/p>\n

At a time when North Korean missiles have been flying over Japan and some here worry about the unpredictability of the United States under President Trump, Mr. Abe capitalized on voters\u2019 desire for stability.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel C. Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University, characterized Mr. Abe\u2019s campaign message as an appeal to vague fears. \u201cHe said, \u2018There is this bad threat that\u2019s out there, and you have to trust me because I know how to handle things,\u2019 \u201d Mr. Sneider said.<\/span><\/p>\n

That message resonated with voters like Natsuyo Kobayashi, 38, a caregiver at a center for the disabled who cast a vote for the Liberal Democratic candidate in Sayama, a suburban town outside Tokyo.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe L.D.P. has been serving such a long time and knows what to do,\u201d Ms. Kobayashi said. \u201cAnd I think Japan should become a country that can protect itself with amending the Constitution. Missiles have been flying over, but I don\u2019t think the U.S. will actually come to protect us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With the economy slowly improving, voters also seemed willing to accept Mr. Abe\u2019s plan to raise a consumption tax that he has vowed to apply to child care and free university and college tuition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the world and Japanese economy have been recovering, which is good timing for Japan to increase the sales tax,\u201d said Eiji Ikebe, 47, a human resources consultant who voted for the Liberal Democratic candidate in the Chofu neighborhood of Tokyo. \u201cThe important thing,\u201d he added, \u201cis not to create too much confusion and turbulence in politics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/22\/world\/asia\/japan-election-shinzo-abe.html<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t