Abe on course for comfortable win in Japan election
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was on course to sweep to a comfortable victory in a snap election on Sunday, handing him a mandate to hard en his already hawkish stance on North Korea andre-en erg is et he world’ s number-three economy.
Abe’s conservative coalition was on track to win 311 seats in the 465-seat parliament, according to a projection published by private broadcaster T BS, putting the nationalist blue blood on course to become Japan’s longest-serving leader.
The comfortable election win is likely to stiffen Abe’s resolve to tackle North Korea’s nuclear menace, as the key US regional ally seeks to exert maximum pressure on the regime in Pyongyang after it fired two missiles over Japan in the space of a month.
Millions of Japanese braved torrential rain and driving winds to vote, as a typhoon bears down on the country with many heeding warnings to cast their ballots early.
Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) benefitted from a weak and splintered opposition, with the two main parties facing him created only a matter of weeks ago.
Support for the Party of Hope founded by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike fizzled after an initial blaze of publicity and was on track to win around 50 seats, the TBS projection suggested.
A new centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party fared slightly better than expected but was still far behind Abe.
“The LDP’s victory is simply because the opposition couldn’t form a united front ,” political scientist Mi kit aka Masuy am a from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies said.
The short 12-day campaign was dominated by the economy and the global crisis over North Korea, which has threatened to “sink” Japan into the sea.
Abe stuck to a hardline stance throughout, stressing that Japan “would not waver” in the face of an increasingly belligerent regime in Pyongyang.