 "Japan set for first woman PM: Sanae Takaichi wins race to succeed Ishiba")
Japan is all set to witness history as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] picks Sanae Takaichi as the leader of the party, paving the way for her to be the first female prime minister of the country. Takaichi, a right-winger, has pledged to build a “strong and prosperous” Japan on the international stage.
During the Saturday ballot, she managed to beat her moderate rival, Shinjiro Koizumi, in a runoff election at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo on Saturday. LDP conducted the polls after former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced his resignation as the party leader. Ishiba was in office for a year, and at that time, his appointment angered the right wing of his party.
Takaichi now inherits a LDP that has suffered two bruising elections in the past year as voters punished it over a funding scandal and its failure to address the cost-of-living crisis. “Recently, I have heard harsh voices from across the country saying we don’t know what the LDP stands for anymore,” Takaichi said moments before the runoff vote. “That sense of urgency drove me. I wanted to turn people’s anxieties about their daily lives and the future into hope.”
How it played out
According to Kyodo Times, Takaichi won the first round of voting, securing 183 of 589 votes, with Koizumi in second place with 164 votes. With that, three other candidates were knocked out of the contest.
The runoff, in which MPs’ votes were given greater weight than those of rank-and-file party members, theoretically favoured Koizumi, who was said to be more popular among lawmakers. However, it was Takaichi who emerged as a winner after the second decisive round of voting.
While the LDP-led coalition no longer holds a majority of seats in parliament, Takaichi is widely expected to be approved as prime minister when MPs vote in the middle of the month. To deny her the prime ministership, opposition parties would have to unite behind their own candidate – a scenario observers have described as unthinkable.
Takaichi’s immediate task will now be to unite her party and win back public support after more than a year of scandal and poor election results.
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