Two days after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan held parliamentary elections on Sunday. About half of the seats in the upper house, the smaller chamber of parliament, will be filled. The result is hardly surprising. As expected before the assassination, the LDP party of the murdered Abe, which is also the party of the incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, wins.
But how will Kishida deal with the expanded parliamentary majority? And what will change in Japan with the death of Shinzo Abe? The political scientist Axel Klein classifies.
SRF News: Did the assassination of Shinzo Abe affect the election or the election result?
Axel Klein: So far this does not seem to be the case. Both the turnout and the LDP’s share of the vote were as expected. In 1980 there was already a death of a prime minister. But he died naturally ten days before a general election. You could see it much more clearly then.
Shinzo Abe was still heavily involved in the background as the LDP’s eminence grise. What does this mean for the politics of the LDP?
This means that a very important figure who advocated for constitutional reform, an expansion of national defense efforts, and presumably an expansion of the range of operations of Japan’s armed forces is gone.
The party will probably need quite a while before it has realigned itself.
It is now completely unclear how the vacuum left by Abe is to be filled. The party will probably need quite a while before it has realigned itself.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considered an internal party critic of Shinzo Abe’s policies. Does he have a free hand now?
There have indeed been conflicts between the two in the past. For example, supporters of Abes Kishida had taken away important constituencies in his home region and given them to his coalition partner. Now there may have been room for Kishida to push through his own identity and his own political proposals.
Abe was considered an arch-conservative nationalist who pushed the country politically to the right. Does Kishida want to correct that?
Abe wanted to see the “Abenomics” named after him continued. Kishida opposed it. He takes the position that large parts of Japanese society have not benefited from this neoliberal approach and have failed at the bottom. Instead, he coined the term “new capitalism”. On the question of changing the constitution, however, he is likely to proceed at a much more moderate pace.
To what extent do possible religious motives for Abe’s killer play a role in Japan’s politics?
Religious groups are nothing new in Japanese politics. While the constitution prescribes a clear separation between organized religion and the state, this does not prevent religious organizations from becoming politically involved and supporting candidates.
The separation of state and religion does not prevent religious organizations from getting involved politically and supporting candidates.
The junior partner of the LDP, Komeito, joined the coalition with the LDP at the end of the 1990s because it wanted to protect itself from state intervention. Since then, support from religious groups may play a role in mobilizing voters for many LDP politicians, even if it is frowned upon by the rest of society. This was also the case with Shinzo Abe and the South Korean-born Unification Church. The assassin knew about it and then made his tragic decision.
The conversation was conducted by Roger Brändlin.