TOKYO:  , Japan’s new prime minister will be formally elected by parliament on Oct 1 following next week’s leadership contest, a ruling party official said on Wednesday ( Sep 18 ).
In the internal vote on September 27th, polls indicate that three frontrunners are emerging among the nine candidates to take over Fumio Kishida as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP ).
They are liberal economic stability minister Sanae Takaichi, 63, previous LDP secretary-general Shigeru Ishiba, 67, and Shinjiro Koizumi, 43, brother of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The traditional LDP, which has ruled about uninterrupted for decades, has a majority in parliament, making it essentially guaranteed that the party’s winner will be prime minister.
A LDP standard told AFP that Yasukazu Hamada, a LDP senator in charge of parliament affairs, that the group “plans to join a congress session on October 1” to choose the new prime minister.
According to media reports, the opposition group accepted the date, which will be officially announced by the authorities on Monday.
Kishida, 67, whose three-year expression was tarnished by crises, voter anger over rising costs and sliding surveys ratings, announced last month that he was stepping down.
In the administration vote, each of the LDP’s 367 congress members cast a ballot, and another 367 seats will be determined based on the preferences of rank-and-file group members and followers.
Although there is no guarantee that any of Takaichi, Ishiba, or Koizumi will rise as the future winners, polls from various Japanese media have placed them in the lead.
Koizumi may be Japan’s youngest-ever prime minister while Takaichi, a voice nationalist common with the LDP’s traditional aircraft, would be the country’s earliest person head.
Her candidacy would probably irritate victims of Japan’s military brutality, including China and South and North Korea, as a regular user to the Yasukuni shrine to the country’s war dead, which includes convicted war criminals.