His appointment by the Japanese Parliament, where the ruling coalition has a comfortable majority, was nothing more than a formality; Now it’s a done deal. After an unsurprising vote in both chambers, Shigeru Ishiba officially becameAhem October, the new Prime Minister of Japan after a vote in Parliament. Ishiba, 67, won on Friday after a close race as leader of the conservative-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a party in power almost without interruption in Japan since 1955.
Ishiba quickly announced the composition of his government, which has 19 members at his side, including two women. Former Executive Secretary Katsunobu Kato was named Finance Minister, while General Nakatani is in charge of Defense and Takeshi Iwaya is named Foreign Minister.
Ishiba, an experienced politician who has already held several ministerial positions, including Defense and Agriculture, had tried four times to take the reins of the LDP, without success. His personality, which divides within the party, is the opposite of that of his predecessor Fumio Kishida, relatively popular among voters, according to analysts.
Among a series of challenges at the economic and political level, as well as on the international stage, Ishiba will face in particular the slow consumption of Japanese households and weak wage growth, which constitute a brake on the country’s growth. . Shigeru Ishiba supports the monetary normalization initiated by the Bank of Japan this year, a stance that sent the yen higher on Friday and sent the Tokyo Stock Exchange tumbling on Monday, where investors also feared the prospect of corporate tax increases.
Series of political-financial scandals
The worrying issue of falling birth rates in Japan, which has the world’s oldest population behind Monaco, should also be among its priorities, and Ishiba is especially keen to address issues of working hours and bolster support to the parents. He will also have to confront voters’ distrust of his party after a series of political and financial scandals that rocked him and undermined Kishida’s popularity rating.
Beyond Japan’s borders, the new leader will also have to manage international tensions, while his predecessor pledged to double defense spending and strengthen ties with the United States and other countries shaken by the rise of China and the behavior of Russia. and North Korea.
Last week, a Japanese warship crossed the Taiwan Strait for the first time. A week earlier, a Chinese aircraft carrier had sailed between two Japanese islands near Taiwan. Japan has also taken off fighter jets several times in recent weeks to respond to the activities of Russian and Chinese aircraft, including in its airspace.
Ishiba, who visited Taiwan in August, is in favor of the creation of a military alliance in the region, based on the NATO model and its principle of collective defense. “By replacing Russia with China and Ukraine with Taiwan, the absence of a NATO-like collective self-defense system in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense”Ishiba said in a recent policy paper.
