CHINO, Japan, Aug. 17, 2024—The upcoming election to choose the next president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the post that automatically gives the person the premiership because of the LDP’s majority of parliament, looks like the recentTokyo governor race in which more than 50 candidates run, fanning chaos, sexism, and numerous things that voters greeted as undesirable and exotic reigned.
If not as many as the Tokyo race, the LDP president race is drawing nearly 10 candidates and presumptive ones toward the Sept. 29 election. The race was kicked off this week after the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, announced that he would no seek a reelection Aug. 14.
The candidates, as has been with the recent Japanese leaders including Kishida, do not map out Japan’s long-term course. Kishida, who inherited the late leader Shinzo Abe’s ambiguous ‘A Beautiful Japan’ dictum, carried with him the ‘New Japan’ banner. During the two leaders’ administration, Japan’s global standing steadily slipped, nearly plunging to the bottom of the 38- member OECD, now well below Singapore and slightly under South Korea.
A common denominating element of the candidates is that all are inheriting Abe’s nationalism and rearmament tilt. Kishida publicly pledged to double Japan’s defense outlays, to over 2 percent of GDP. A former defense minister who is believed to be a key candidate, Shigeru Ishiba, for one, recently visited Taiwan to elucidate Japan’s stance toward China.
Ishiba, who lost an LDP president election to Abe a decade ago, is a loner among the candidates. Many if not all others can be called the ‘Abe children’ running on the platform of nationalism, pro-U.S. and west. Sanae Takaichi, seen publicly as a viable candidate who had served as an economy and security minister under Abe, espouses amending Japan’s constitution to defend the sovereignty of ‘land, waters, air, and resources’ in open defiance against China, North Korea and Russia.
Other candidates bear similar nationalistic penchant by different degree – while all seem to lack visions about Japan’s long-term directions and relationships with the global society, among them, the economy and finance, technology, monetary policy, global trade, culture, and most importantly, social issues.
That could be deferred, as Kishida entrusted fully, to the Japanese bureaucracy with an antiquated belief that a country’s strength owes to an active bureaucracy. In July, Kishida authorized sharp rises of compensations for bureaucrats – while the private-sector is struggling to do so. Perhaps, it could have been one of few policies that drew applause even though only from one corner of society that raised eyebrows of the public. Whoever inherits Kishida’s post, she/he has to rely excessively on the Japanese bureaucracy for most policies, as he did fully.
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