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Strong win for Japan Prime Minister Abe

Posted on 29 October, 2017

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe secured a historic election victory last week, edging the country closer to revising its pacifist constitution. Despite a string of alleged cronyism scandals and the ensuing approval rate crisis earlier this year, Abe managed to remain confident and won a major gamble in calling for an early election. Abe will likely to continue policies he has pursued in the nearly five years since taking office: addressing increasing security threats; a hard line on North Korea; an ageing society; and the need to end the country’s long economic stagnation. Among the most contentious proposed revisions is the one seeking to add a clause to Article 9 of the Constitution. Currently it states that Japan will not maintain armed forces to ensure it does not wage a war again. The revised version will state that it will transform Japan’s Self-Defence into full-fledged military. However, constitutional change will require not only approval from two-thirds of both the Upper and Lower Houses, but also majority approval in a public referendum. Another equally significant hurdle is the fact that, even if constitutional change were possible, Japan’s fiscal health may not be up to the task. The single biggest concern of Japanese voters is the state of the economy, the outlook for public welfare and pension payments in particular. Such concerns can easily be understood seeing as a quarter of the population is already 65 years or older. Furthermore, Japan’s debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is the highest among OECD countries. The Liberal Democratic Party is due to hold presidential elections next September, however last Sunday’s victory means Abe is virtually assured of retaining the leadership of his party for another three years and going on to be the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history.