ZCZC
BFF-09
JAPAN-POLITICS-ABE
Japan’s Abe eyes fresh term in leadership vote
TOKYO, Sept 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is widely
expected to win his ruling party’s leadership election Thursday, setting him
on course to become Japan’s longest-serving premier.
“I’m determined to build a new country together with you,” Abe, who has
managed to recover from a series of cronyism and cover-up scandals, said on
the eve of the election.
“I promise to take the lead in handing over a proud and hopeful Japan to
younger generations,” he said in a stump speech in Tokyo.
Polls show Abe, 63, is expected to romp to victory in a two-horse race
with former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, a hawkish self-confessed
“military geek”.
Final results — combining votes from lawmakers of the Liberal Democratic
Party and its party members — are expected to be announced early Thursday
afternoon.
A win would effectively hand him three more years as PM, allowing him to
break the record of the nation’s longest serving premiership held by Taro
Katsura, a revered politician who served three times between 1901 and 1913.
While voters see the economy and social security as top priority, Abe aims
to use the election to push his dream of reforming the country’s post-World
War II pacifist constitution.
Abe has frequently voiced his wish to rewrite the charter, imposed by the
victorious US occupiers, which forces the country to “forever renounce war”
and dictates that armed forces will “never be maintained”.
Abe insists any changes would merely remove the country’s well-equipped
Self-Defense Forces from the constitutional paradox whereby they should not
technically exist.
But any changes to the text would be hugely sensitive in pacifist Japan
and almost certainly greeted with fury in China and the Koreas, 20th-century
victims of Japanese military aggression.
In addition, surveys show that tinkering with the legal text is far from
top of most Japanese voters’ to-do list, as the country faces an ageing and
declining population and a still-sluggish economy.
Even if Abe manages to force a revision through parliament, he would face
a referendum, raising the prospect of a Brexit-style political meltdown if
the people vote against him, said Yu Uchiyama, political scientist from the
University of Tokyo.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1019 hrs