Takaichi Likely to Become 1st Female PM as LDP, JIP Agree to Form Coalition (UPDATE 2)

Liberal Democratic Party President Sanae Takaichi and Japan Innovation Party leader Hirofumi Yoshimura agreed to form a coalition government on Monday, after the LDP agreed to requests from the JIP on such policies as reducing the number of seats in the Diet.

With the agreement, JIP lawmakers are expected to join LDP lawmakers in voting for Takaichi in the prime ministerial election on Tuesday during the extraordinary Diet session to be convened on the same day. This could crown her as Japan’s first-ever female prime minister.

“I would like to thank Yoshimura, [JIP co-leader Fumitake] Fujita and other JIP members for engaging in policy talks for a long time, as the parties share the same views on the nation. Starting today, [the LDP and the JIP] will make the Japanese economy strong,” Takaichi said at the start of a meeting between the leaders before they signed the coalition agreement.

“We, the JIP, are a small party, but we share the same desire to make Japan a stronger and better country,” Yoshimura said.

In the two parties’ coalition, the JIP will provide “out-of-cabinet cooperation,” as the junior coalition partner does not intend for its lawmakers to join the cabinet. To maintain close contact between the administration and the JIP, the party’s Diet affairs chief, Takashi Endo, is expected to be named as a special advisor to the prime minister.

In addition to a consensus on trimming the number of seats in the Diet, the two sides agreed to pass legislation during the ordinary Diet session next year to create a “second capital” that will serve as the nation’s capital should Tokyo be affected by a disaster. They also agreed to work toward social security reform, consumption tax cuts and a ban on corporate and organizational donations to political parties.

Looks like Japan is set to get its own Iron Lady. The Nikkei was up sharply overnight (Monday in Japan) and Japanese stocks listed on U.S. stock exchanges are up across the board today.

For those of you who do not follow Japanese politics, the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) is roughly equivalent to the Republican party in the U.S. and even uses the same mascot, the elephant.

However, even though it has been the ruling party for most of the postwar period, it has an establishment wing which has not been very popular lately and has lost its majorities.

It was dealt another blow when its longtime coalition partner Komeito announced it was withdrawing from the coalition. Komeito is a centrist party aligned with the Sokka Gakkai, a fundamentalist Buddhist sect which might be compared establishment Catholicism (think Catholic Charities) on the U.S. side.

So the only way for the LDP to remain in power was to form a coalition with one of the smaller further right parties. The Japan Innovation Party (JIP) was the obvious choice and that agreement has been finalized for the Prime Minister vote later this week, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

Mrs. Takaichi is still going to be a few votes shy of a majority. Those votes are likely to come from Sanseito, an even further right party, which percentagewise grew the most in the last election.

I will leave it to our Freepers based in Japan to clarify, but my understanding is that Sanseito is the equivalent of MAGA in the U.S. whereas JIP would be the equivalent of the Libertarian wing of the GOP. Think of a less than pure version of Rand Paul here.

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