Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Voters in Japan offered Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a resounding mandate on January 9 in the snap election. The election was held only 110 days after she became the first woman to serve as the country’s prime minister. The mandate is seen as an endorsement for her economic policies and tough stance on immigration and China.
Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party won in a landslide, securing a rare supermajority in the 465-member House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral Parliament. The party won 316 seats, up from 198, NHK said — the first time since World War II that a Japanese political party has won more than two-thirds of the seats, according to the New York Times.
The result clears the way for Takaichi to enact a conservative agenda on defence and social issues and to strengthen her position on the global stage, with President Trump having given her candidacy a ringing endorsement. The outcome is a remarkable reversal of fortune for Takaichi’s party, which governed Japan for much of the past seven decades but has suffered a series of bruising defeats in recent years, leaving it in the unusual position of being a minority in both houses of Parliament.
Japanese stocks surged on January 9 as voters gave a green light to her expansionary fiscal policy. The benchmark Nikkei 225 jumped 5 per cent in early trading. Takaichi, 64, soared to victory in part because of her popularity among young people, who see her as a charismatic, dynamic leader. Takaichi’s win comes as right-wing groups in Japan are gaining strength. Sanseito, a Japanese political party that shares some similarities to Trump’s MAGA movement, won 15 seats, up from two.
