–PM Keeps Most Key Cabinet Ministers, Brings in 2 Younger Lawmakers
By Max Sato
(MaceNews) – Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was re-elected in a rare parliamentary run-off vote on Monday after the ruling coalition lost a majority in the Lower House general election about two weeks ago as many voters, weary of high costs, punished Ishiba’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party for its political funding scandal.
Ishiba continues to face the challenge of running a minority government in a hung parliament. He was sworn in by Emperor Naruhito as Japan’s 103rd prime minister late on Monday.
In the country’s first run-off election of a prime minister in 30 years, Ishiba beat Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister and the leader of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, by winning 221 votes against 160 for Noda and 84 invalid votes given to other members of the House of Representatives. Noda failed to gain enough support from other key opposition parties over differences in how to raise take-home pay for lower to middle income earners.
Just before the second house vote, the 240-seat House of Councillors (eight vacancies), where the LDP holds a comfortable majority, had picked Ishiba, giving him 142 votes out of the total 239 votes (the speaker does not vote) against 46 votes for Noda.
In the first round in the more powerful Lower House, Ishiba won 221 votes, short of a simple majority of 233, while Noda came in second with 151 votes.
In the 465-seat lower chamber, the LDP won 191 seats, down sharply from 256 seats it had held before the Sept. 27 election. Komeito was also reduced by eight seats to 24. Together, the coalition has only 215 seats, short of a simple majority of 233. By contrast, the opposition CDPJ increased by 50 to 148 seats while the Democratic Party for the People also saw its seats rise to 28 from seven.
The Democratic Party of Japan, the predecessor of Noda’s current party, was briefly in power from 2009 until late 2012. The Democratic Party for the People, a splinter from the DPJ, is offering to support the ruling coalition in passing bills on condition that the government raise the income tax exemption amount.
Hailing from a political family, Ishiba, 67, has vowed to provide a sense of security to the public and stability in Asia based on a 72-year-old security treaty with the U.S. He is basically inheriting his predecessor’s goal: to create more opportunities for youth, women and rural residents, ensure full support to households raising children and facilitate sustainable wage hikes.
On Oct. 1, Ishiba put together a cabinet of 19 ministers aged 51 to 75 years old (12 of them were in their 60s), with the average of 63.6, little changed from the government of Fumio Kishida who stepped aside in September over sluggish approval ratings after serving for three years. Only two of them were women, down by three from the previous administration. The initial cabinet resigned Monday ahead of the special Diet session to elect the new prime minster.
Ishiba reappointed most of the key cabinet ministers while bringing in two younger lawmakers in their 40s, lowering the average age of the 19 members by just 1.6 years old to 61.95.
Keisuke Suzuki, 47, replaced Hideki Makihara, 53, as Minister of Justice after Makihara lost in the Lower House election in light of revelations that he was one of the many LDP lawmakers who had supported the Unification Church, another factor that led to massive wins for opposition parties.
Ruling party lawmakers have done little to counter what some lawyers say are illegal activities by the Unification Church, which has cultivated close ties with conservative politicians for over five decades. The cult, which was founded in Seoul in 1954 by the late Sun Myung Moon, has been accused for decades in Japan for brainwashing followers into donating large amounts of cash, buying expensive religious goods and marrying a stranger at mass weddings, according to news reports and testimony in courts.
Taku Eto, 64, returned as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, a portfolio that he had in 2018 under the then Priem Minister Shinzo Abe. Eto replaced Yasuhiro Ozato, 66, who also lost in the election.
Ishiba appointed Hiromasa Nakano, 46, Minster of Land, Infrastructure, Trasport and Tourism, a cabinet position saved for the LDP’s junior coalition partner Komeito. Nakano’s predecessor Tetsuo Saito, 72, became the new leader of the party backed by the Buddhist movement Soka GakkaI after Keiichi Ishii lost his seat in the Lower House election.
Katsunobu Kato, 68, will stay as finance minister. He is known to have knowledge of economic and social security policies. Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, 67, is well-versed in security issues, having served as defense minister.
Ishiba is seeking close working ties with the Bank of Japan. He told reporters last month that the government would “avoid discussing specifics” of what the BOJ should do to achieve 2% price stability with sustained wage hikes while saying, “I expect the basic tone of monetary policy to be maintained.” Many of the bank’s board members are also calling for a cautious approach to normalizing the bank’s policy after years of keeping interest rates near zero.
As part of the first phase of its gradual policy normalization process, the BOJ is set to continued raising its policy rate further toward 1%, likely at every third or fourth meeting. Noting that real interest rates are “at significantly low levels,” the BOJ said after its Oct. 30-31 meeting that it would “continue to raise the policy interest rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation” if growth and inflation evolve in line with its outlook.
The bank is widely expected to raise the target for the overnight interest rate by 25 basis points (0.25 percentage point) to 0.5% at its next meeting on Dec. 18-19 after leaving it steady at 0.25% in September, raising it to the current level from a range of 0% to 0.1% in July and conducting its first rate hike in 17 years in March when it also ended its seven-year-old yield curve control framework.
In its quarterly Outlook Report issued on Oct. 31, the bank said risks to growth are “generally balanced” while those to inflation are skewed to the upside for fiscal 2025 starting next April (wage pressures and price markups may turn out to be higher than expected).