Japan’s prime minister set to decide date for snap election

TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was gearing up to dissolve the lower house of parliament and call a snap general election, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai confirmed yesterday.

Before Abe’s departure on Monday for New York to attend the UN General Assembly, he told Nikai during a meeting that he “will decide on the timing of the snap election after returning from the UN General Assembly on Friday”.

Yesterday, Nikai, during a meeting of ruling LDP executives, reportedly conveyed Abe’s intentions and relayed to local media the party’s determination to get all of its candidates fielded in the race elected.

The head of the LDP’s junior coalition partner Komeito party, Natsuo Yamaguchi, meanwhile, told a press briefing yesterday he would expedite plans for his party’s participation in the election race, likening the political environment to a “battlefield”.

“We will start considering how to brace for the election, keeping in mind that we are always in a battlefield,” Yamaguchi said.

The chairman of the election strategy committee, Ryu Shionoya, said a solid structure would be established to ensure a victory, while Policy Research Council chairman Fumio Kishida said plans to draft a manifesto would be accelerated.

The opposition camp, however, has criticised Abe’s move to call a snap election, with some accusing the Japanese leader of merely trying to escape from the influence-peddling scandals in which he is implicated and simply engineering a way of staying in power.