The general elections in Japan confirmed the victory of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), which guarantees the permanence of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in power. The result surprised analysts and contradicted part of the projections that indicated that the party would have significant losses of seats in Parliament.
After the vote this Sunday (31), the PLD in fact lost some seats in the Lower House, but still secured a comfortable majority in the House. The party won, alone, 261 of the 465 seats — in the last legislature, there were 276.
Thus, Kishida’s acronym has maintained independence from the main coalition party, Komeito, and will be able to maintain control of parliamentary committees, facilitating the passage of bills, including important budget proposals that are the flag of the new prime minister.
A negative performance in the election would have raised expectations that Kishida could follow his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, and become another short-term prime minister. Suga resigned from his post a year after taking over from Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-running prime minister, who, in turn, stepped down last year due to health problems.
If the vote was a test for Kishida, you could say he passed. The election was called as soon as he took office, last month, and represented a challenge to the PLD. The party has been the main dominant force in Japanese politics since the postwar period, but its popularity has been shaken by public discontent with the country’s response to the Covid-19 crisis.
After a record wave of infections forced the country to hold the Tokyo Olympics behind closed doors, cases plummeted, and most restrictions were lifted.
With the public approval gained at the polls, therefore, Kishida is now better able to implement some measures that he has listed as priorities.
A soft-spoken former banker, he has struggled with the image that he lacks charisma. While he has followed the traditional policies of the far right wing of the party, pushing for increased spending on the armed forces, for example, he has also pledged to reduce social inequality.
The prime minister advocates a “new capitalism” that can correct disparities through a package of tax reforms, as well as housing assistance and education programs for middle-income families.
When he won the internal dispute to take over the party’s leadership, Kishida announced a stimulus package valued at 30 trillion yen (BRL 1.46 trillion), and the expectation is that it will be released by the end of the year. In a press conference this Monday (1st), the prime minister promised to respond quickly to those who want political stability and the implementation of significant measures, including economic recovery in the post-pandemic.
In opposition to the government, the big winner of the election was Japan’s Innovation Party — which, despite its name that might indicate a progressive bias, is right-wing conservative. The party managed to capitalize on the discontent with the central government and the traditional left-wing opposition and quadrupled its presence in Parliament, guaranteeing 41 seats.
Thus, it surpassed Komeito, the PLD’s coalition partner, and became the third largest caucus in the House, behind Kishida’s party and the left-wing Constitutional Democratic Party.
According to analysts, one of the reasons for the success of the Innovation Party was the figure of Hirofumi Yoshimura, governor of Osaka. The 46-year-old politician is the subtitle’s No. 2 politician, has wide reach on social media — more than 1.2 million followers — and gained popularity during the pandemic by making frequent television appearances with vehement appeals for the population to comply with the restrictions. imposed to contain contagions.
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