Shinzo Abe secures strong mandate in Japan's general election

[DonViejo]

Source: The Guardian




The Japanese prime minister’s hard line on North Korea helped him to crush opposition parties, according to exit polls

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Sunday 22 October 2017 07.33 EDT

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has secured a strong mandate for his hard line against North Korea and room to push for revision of the country’s pacifist constitution after his party crushed untested opposition parties in Sunday’s general election.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner Komeito were on course to win 311 seats, keeping its two-thirds “supermajority” in the 465-member lower house, an exit poll by TBS television showed. Some other broadcasters had the ruling bloc slightly below the two-thirds mark.

After a day that saw millions of voters brave driving rain and strong winds brought on by Typhoon Lan, Abe’s election gamble appeared to have paid off, after he called the vote more than a year earlier than scheduled.

An initial challenge by the Party of Hope, formed only late last month by the populist governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, petered out as prospective supporters stayed with the far more established and conservative LDP.




Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/22/shinzo-abe-secures-strong-mandate-in-japans-general-election

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. Trump is probably in tears.

It's so unfortunate that some guy named Abe gets a supermajority, and our dear president has to make do with the smallest of majorities in the senate. So unfair. And it's all due to those illegal voters.

Goddammit, our president deserves a supermajority, then biggest ever.

He's finding some solace on the golf course, though it's hard to see the ball through all those tears.

I hope Abe reminds Trump of the supermajority every time they meet.

[Calista241]

2. Shinzo Abe is the coolest name Ive heard all day. n/t

[sandensea]

3. Unfortunately, he's a bit of a right-winger with a yen for confrontation with China.

That said, he's far more moderate - and of course, qualified - than the alt-right regime we're under now.

[psychopomp]

4. Abe is a very far-right leader

He is, in fact, a radical, held in check by public opinion. He wants to rewrite the Constitution of Japan, not only Article 9, but the entire thing, whole cloth. We can be sure it would be replaced by a document that does not enshrine the personal freedoms that are protected today. With his win, Abe will surely make revision a key policy goal.

Abe, like Drumpf, does not trust the media and his Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi has threatened to revoke broadcasting licenses for stations that are "unfair" to the current government. Abe himself has, in person, told the bosses from all the major networks to be "fair," meaning they need to fall in line.

Prime Minister Abe is a "special advisor" to Nippon Kaigi, a secretive and influential group that wants to undo the advances in human rights made in Japan and restore the Emperor to prominence. You can read about it here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-religious-cult-secretly-running-japan (a bit over-the-top title editorialization)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi#Criticism

edit: You have it backwards on China: China has been the aggressor and has a track record of confrontation in its actions around the Senkaku and Ryuku islands. If anything, Abe has shown restraint towards the CCP.

[sandensea]

5. Thank you for that truly informative reply. One for the bookmarks.

I had heard a little here and there about his highly jingoist and militaristic views - but aside from his constitutional rewrite push, which was in international news a lot last year, had no idea they went that far. Thank you.

The pendulum of world politics has definitely swung right for the moment - far to the right.