Coalition deal puts Takaichi on brink of becoming Japan’s first female PM

TOKYO - Hardline conservative Sanae Takaichi is almost certain to become Japan’s first female prime minister on Oct 21, after the right-wing opposition Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, said it was ready to back her premiership.

“I told Takaichi that we should move forward together,” Ishin’s leader and Osaka governor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters in the western Japanese city on Oct 20.

He would meet Ms Takaichi at 6pm (5pm Singapore time) to conclude the alliance, he added.

The coalition deal

included deadlines and specific plans for policy implementation, including a 10 per cent reduction in lawmaker numbers, said Ishin’s other boss, Mr Fumitake Fujita, after he and Mr Yoshimura met party lawmakers to outline the coalition agreement.

Investors’ anticipation of a deal that could lead to higher government spending weakened the yen and pushed stocks in Japan to a record high, with the blue-chip Nikkei share index closing 3.4 per cent higher.

The cooperation agreement would deliver a combined 231 seats in Parliament’s dominant Lower House. It would fall two short of a majority, but ensure Ms Takaichi

likely wins a vote in Parliament on Oct 21

to pick Japan’s next prime minister.

She will need only a majority of ballots cast rather than of all members in any run-off vote.

To govern, however, she will still need to court the support of other opposition groups, including for an upcoming supplementary budget.

The expected deal with Ishin follows the

collapse of the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) 26-year coalition with Komeito

, which ended its alliance after the ruling party picked Ms Takaichi as its new leader.

Komeito’s abrupt withdrawal triggered talks among opposition parties, including the second-largest Ishin, that could have derailed her premiership ambitions and thrown her party out of power for the first time in more than a decade.

Ishin’s decision to side with the LDP ends that possibility.

Fiscal dove, security hawk

Ms Takaichi, a fiscal dove, has called for higher spending and tax cuts to cushion consumers from rising inflation and has criticised the Bank of Japan’s decision to raise interest rates.

“Expectations for Takaichi’s economic policies, which include fiscal expansion and monetary easing, appear to be facilitating rising share prices and a weaker yen,” said Nomura Securities strategist Fumika Shimizu.

Some analysts say Ishin, which advocates small government and spending cuts, could restrain some of Ms Takaichi’s spending ambitions.

Ms Takaichi wants to revise Japan’s pacifist postwar Constitution to recognise the role of its military.

Ms Takaichi, who is a regular visitor to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo – viewed by some Asian neighbours as a symbol of wartime aggression – wants higher defence spending to deter neighbouring China.

She has also called for stricter immigration rules and opposes social policies, such as

allowing women to retain their surnames

after marriage, which she says undermine traditional values.

For now, Ishin will not take up a post in Ms Takaichi’s government, at least until it is clear that the partnership with the LDP is working, Mr Yoshimura said later in a television interview.

“Right now, we’re still a group of lawmakers with no experience in government. So rather than asking for a ministerial post, we want to first focus on realising our policies as part of the ruling coalition,” he said. REUTERS