Japan’s ruling party has won a comfortable victory in an election overshadowed by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Exit polls showed that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which led Abe until he resigned in 2020, had won more than half of the 125 seats contested in the 248-seat upper house.
The LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito are expected to win more than 63 seats, according to an exit poll by the Kyodo news agency. Public broadcaster NHK said the parties would win between 69 and 83 seats.
The coalition had to get 55 seats to keep its majority in the upper house, the less powerful chamber of the Japanese parliament.
The party was expected to act long before Abe, Japan’s oldest prime minister, was shot dead by a gunman while delivering a campaign speech in the western city of Nara on Friday morning.
Although the official result has not yet been announced, experts said Abe’s violent death, at age 67, could increase participation and support for his party.
A mourning Sunday at the entrance of the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo. Photo: Toru Hanai / EPA
Kei Sato, the LDP candidate Abe had campaigned for when he was assassinated, said: “Former Prime Minister Abe, who came to support me, was shot in an act of terrorism in the middle of our campaign. electoral.
“But we continued our campaign in the belief that we must not give in or fear terrorism; we must overcome it. I hope to travel to Tokyo tomorrow to tell former Prime Minister Abe himself this victory,” Sato added. , who was expected to win his seat.
Japanese government officials had urged people to vote to demonstrate the country’s refusal to be intimidated by the violence, while newspaper editorials criticized Abe’s murder, carried out with a homemade shotgun, as an attack on democracy.
“We must never allow violence to suppress speech during elections, which are the basis of democracy,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said during a campaign speech on the eve of the vote.
The pre-election period had been dominated by rising prices, energy shortages and security threats, including LDP’s plans to double defense spending to at least 2% of GDP in the face of a nuclear-armed North Korea and a more assertive China.
The vote was being seen as a referendum on Kishida’s first 10 months in office; government control, which is decided in the lower house, was not at stake.
The investigation, however, was overshadowed by Abe’s death and growing questions about his security arrangements and the motives of his alleged killer.
Tetsuya Yamagami is escorted by police officers as they take him to Nara prosecutors. Photo: KYODO / Reuters
The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, has told police she initially intended to target the leader of a religious group to which her mother had made a “huge donation” that led her to bankruptcy. He reportedly admitted that he had also wanted to kill Abe, whom he accused of having ties to the group.
Japanese newspapers and broadcasters have not named the organization, but some Japanese media reports identified the group as the Unification Church, whose members are often ridiculed as “Moonies.”
The NHK said Yamagami had spent months planning the attack, having started building explosives before deciding to build “multiple” weapons using the skills he had learned during his three years in the maritime self-defense force.
Two days after Abe was shot down in front of a train station while heading to a small crowd, there was disbelief about how Yamagami, a 41-year-old Nara resident, had managed to move freely behind Abe and shoot two shots at distance. before being fought on the ground by security guards.
On Saturday, the Nara prefectural police chief admitted that the security provisions had been defective and promised a thorough investigation of the fault.
“I think it is undeniable that there were problems with the protection and security measures of former Prime Minister Abe,” Tomoaki Onizuka told reporters.
“In all the years since I became a police officer in 1995 … there is no more remorse, no greater remorse than this.”
Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck.
The LDP’s victory has paved the way for some three “golden” years in which Kishida, who has pledged to build a “new capitalism”, will not have to face elections.
Some analysts said a particularly strong demonstration could even spur him to revise Japan’s “pacifist” constitution, a controversial move that Abe, his most vocal advocate, never realized for lack of public support.
“In the coming months, the government is sure to try to strengthen internal security,” said James Brady, a Japanese analyst at US-based consulting firm Teneo. “By undermining the general sense of security and public order, the event could also give more impetus to Abe’s key causes such as the accumulation of defense and constitutional review.”
Miu Komuro, who voted for the LDP in an eastern Tokyo constituency, said: “I wanted to vote for a party that has been stable in power.”
But Yuko Takeuchi, 52, a nurse from Tokyo who voted for the Japanese Communist Party, said, “Of course I’m sorry for her death, but this election must be separated from that.”
Focus will soon be on Abe’s funeral, which will only be held for relatives and close colleagues at Zojoji Temple in central Tokyo on Tuesday after an awakening the night before. No plans for a public monument have been announced yet.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Japan on Monday to offer his condolences, the state department said.
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“The alliance between Japan and the United States has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for decades,” Blinken said Saturday after G20 talks in Bali.
“Prime Minister Abe really took this partnership to new heights. The friendship between the Japanese and American people is equally unbreakable. So we are on the side of the people of Japan, with the Prime Minister’s family, after a truly appalling act of violence. “