TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s ruling party has yet to vote on a successor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe but his loyal lieutenant looks set to win the post, the result of backroom maneuvering and bargaining that began months before Abe said he’d quit over ill health.
Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s chief cabinet secretary, emerged this week as the frontrunner in the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) Sept. 14 leadership race when five of the party’s seven factions backed him, before he even announced his candidacy on Wednesday.
The new LDP leader is almost guaranteed to become prime minister because of the party’s majority in parliament’s lower house.
The choice of Suga highlights the lingering influence of factions and old-school, personal politics and his alliance with the LDP’s chief manager of party funds, rather than policy debates, party insiders say.
However, the image of backroom dealing – muted during Abe’s nearly eight years in office – could dent Suga’s credibility with voters in a general election that must be held by late 2021.
“There’s no way that the leader gets elected as a result of a debate over policy, it’s impossible,” said Shizuka Kamei, 83, a former LDP heavyweight who spent 38 years in parliament and was one of five party barons who met secretly to pick a successor to then-premier Keizo Obuchi after he suffered a stroke in April 2000.
For decades, the conservative LDP was dominated by factions whose bosses backed rival candidates in multi-member constituencies, collected and handed out campaign funds, and used their clout to launch runs at the premiership.
That influence was weakened by reforms in the 1990s, but faction bosses still play big roles in the allocation of party and cabinet posts and in determining who wins leadership races.
THREE DINNERS
Unusually, Suga himself is not a member of any faction, making his rise all the more notable. However, party insiders say his path to frontrunner was aided by his alliance with party heavyweight Toshihiro Nikai, the LDP’s secretary general, cemented at three highly publicized dinners since June.
Talk that Abe might step down early, before his term as LDP leader and hence, premier, ends in September 2021, has simmered for months due to his low voter ratings, and gathered steam after reports his chronic illness had worsened.
Nikai, 81, has considerable clout because he effectively controls how the party allocates campaign funds, money that used to be disbursed by faction heads until the 1990s reforms.
Nikai is “an old-school politician who does old-school politics”, said Katsuyuki Yakushiji, a professor at Toyo University.
“For him, public opinion is irrelevant. Nikai has teamed up with Suga to garner support for Suga and set him up as the next prime minister”.
Nikai would benefit from a Suga premiership because Suga is most likely to let Nikai remain in his powerful post.
Nikai could not immediately be reached for comment.
Suga got a big boost on Tuesday when the LDP’s general affairs committee decided to hold a slimmed-down leadership poll, limiting voting to its members of parliament and three representatives from each local chapter.
It rejected calls for a full-scale election that would include rank-and-file members, saying such a vote would take too long and leave a political vacuum, although the outgoing premier stays in his job until after the new leader is chosen.
The committee opted for a format that favors Suga over main rival Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister more popular with the public and grassroots LDP members.
OLD-STYLE
The old-style maneuvering annoyed many rank-and-file LDP members and younger lawmakers.
“This should not be decided secretively,” said Ryusuke Doi, secretary general of the LDP’s chapter in Kanagawa near Tokyo. “I think they did this to crush Ishiba.”
Ishiba has been a rare LDP critic of Abe during his nearly eight-year rule, has long shunned factions and now heads a group with just 19 members.
He also topped surveys of lawmakers whom voters preferred as next prime minister.
He has said the election format was “very regrettable” and bad for both democracy and the party.
Among Suga’s backers are the 98-member strong Hosoda faction, from which Abe hails, and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso’s group with 54 MPs.
Abe had long been thought to favor another candidate, former foreign minister Fumio Kishida.
But Kishida failed to enthuse ordinary voters, ranking low in public opinion polls, and Abe ultimately declined to give him public backing, effectively clearing the way for Suga.
Once Suga gained momentum, other faction leaders jumped on the bandwagon to ensure their members had a good shot at winning cabinet and party executive posts in the new regime, and ensure continuity of the status quo, sources said.
For all the similarities to the days of old-school LDP politics, there is one key distinction: Suga’s status as neither a member nor leader of a faction.
“Factions are still important, but it’s not like the old days when there were powerful faction leaders who all wanted to become prime minister,” said Gerry Curtis, a professor emeritus at Columbia University.
“Suga is the most powerful person and he’s not even in a faction.”
(Reporting by Linda Sieg and Sakura Murakami; Editing by David Dolan and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
