News Analysis
Abe's LDP, short of numbers needed for constitutional revision, smarting over rural rebuke
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Japanese Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party president Shinzo Abe attaches paper rosettes on the winning candidates of the Parliament's upper house election at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on July 21, 2019.
PHOTO: AFP
TOKYO - The road ahead looks rockier for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's dream of revising the country's pacifist Constitution, after he failed to secure the numbers he needed in the Upper House at Sunday's (July 21) election.
It could be with this in mind that Mr Abe has pushed back his goalpost from next year - as he indicated just two months ago - to September 2021, when his current term as Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chief ends. Mr Abe will be Japan's longest-serving prime minister come November, but has yet to build a political or diplomatic legacy worthy of the history books.