The Japan ruling party chose Sanae Takaichi, conservative lasts on Saturday, putting her on the right track to become the first woman Prime Minister of the country in a move to shake off investors and neighbors.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled Japan throughout the post-war period, elected Takaichi, 64, to resume the confidence of an angry audience against the rise in prices and attracted by promising stimulus and tightening groups on migrants.
A vote in Parliament to choose a replacement for outgoing Shigeru Ishiba is expected on October 15. Takaichi is favored because the power coalition has the greatest number of seats.
Inherits the part in crisis
Takaichi, the only woman among the five LDP candidates, prevailed in a runoff against the more moderate Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, who brought to become the youngest modern leader in Japan.
Former Minister of Economic Security and Internal Affairs with an expansionist budgetary program for the world’s fourth economy, Takaichi takes over a party in crisis.
Various other parties, including the expansionist Democratic Party for the people and anti-immigration Sanseito, have constantly attracted voters, especially the youngest, far from the LDP.
The LDP and its coalition partner have lost their majority in the two houses under Ishiba in the past year, triggering its resignation.
“Recently, I heard severe votes from across the country by saying that we no longer know what the LDP represents more,” said Takaichi in a speech before runoff. “This feeling of urgency led me. I wanted to transform the anxieties of people about their daily life and the future in hope.”
Takaichi, who says that her hero is Margaret Thatcher, the first British Prime Minister, offers a more striking vision of the change than Koizumi and is potentially more disruptive.
A defender of the “ABENOMICS” strategy of the deceased first Shinzo ABE to stimulate the economy with aggressive expenses and an easy monetary policy, she previously criticized the increases in interest rates of the Bank of Japan.
Such a change in expenditure could scare investors in Japanese bonds, worry about one of the largest debt charges in the world and exert downward pressure on the yen.
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Naoya Hasegawa, chief bond strategist at Okasan Securities in Tokyo, said the election of Takaichi had weakened the chances of the BOJ increase rates this month, which had a price of about 60% before the vote.
During a press conference after his victory, Takaichi presented various plans to reduce taxes and increase subsidies, but said that she understood “the importance of budgetary prudence”. The monetary policy of the BOJ must explain the fragility of the economy and the growth of wages, she said.
Stick to Trump Trade Deal
Takaichi said she was planning to honor an investment agreement with US President Donald Trump who lowered his punitive prices in exchange for the investment supported by Japanese taxpayers, having already mentioned the possibility of redoing it.
The American ambassador to Japan, George Glass, congratulated Takaichi, displaying on X that he was looking forward to strengthening the Japanese-American partnership “on each front”.
But his nationalist positions – like his regular visits to the Yasukuni sanctuary to the Dead of the Japan War, considered by certain Asian countries as a symbol of his past militarism – can be fed up with neighbors like South Korea and China.
South Korea will seek to “cooperate to maintain positive impetus in the relations of South Japan Korea,” the office of President Lee Jae Myung said in a statement.
Takaichi also promotes the revision of the pacifist constitution of Japan after the war and suggested this year that Japan could form an “almost-security” alliance “with Taiwan, the island governed democratically claimed by China.
Taiwan president Lai Ching-Te welcomed her election, saying that she was an “unwavering friend of Taiwan”.
“We hope that under the leadership of the new president (LDP) Takaichi, Taiwan and Japan can deepen their partnership in fields such as economic trade, security and technology cooperation,” he said in a statement.
If she was elected Prime Minister, Takaichi said she would travel abroad more regularly than her predecessor to pass the word that “Japan is back!”
“I moved away my own balance between professional and private life and I will work, I will work, I work,” Takaichi said in his victory speech.
Warnings for foreigners
Some of his supporters considered his selection as a watershed in the politics dominated by the men of Japan. Takaichi made a daring commitment to raise the number of women in the cabinet in an equal with the Nordic countries.
“The fact that a woman has been chosen could be seen positively. I think it shows that Japan is really starting to change and that this message is going on,” said 30 -year -old worker Misato Kikuchi outside the Shimbashi station in Tokyo.
However, its other socially conservative posts – such as changes opposed to the authorization of married couples to have separate family names – make it more popular among men than women, according to opinion polls.
Its conservative attraction, however, can help blurs the rise of Sanseito, which burst into the dominant political current during a July election, using voters disillusioned by the LDP.
Echoing the warnings of Sanseito concerning foreigners, she launched her first official campaign speech with an anecdote on tourists would have kicked her hometown of Nara.
Takaichi, whose mother was a police officer, promised to repress visitors and immigrants who have come to Japan in recent years.
“We hope it … guides Japanese policy in an” anti-globalism “direction to protect national interests and help people find prosperity and hope,” said Sanseeito in a statement.
