Fumio Kishida, Japan's former foreign minister, won the ruling party's leadership election on Wednesday and is set to become the country's next prime minister, with the immediate task of dealing with a pandemic-ravaged economy and ensuring a solid alliance with Washington to counter growing regional security threats.
Kishida, 64, takes the outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping down after only one year in office.
As the new head of the Liberal Democratic Party, Kishida is set to be sworn in as the next prime minister on Monday in parliament, where his party and coalition partner hold a majority.
After ending only one vote ahead of Taro Kono in the first round, where none of the four candidates, including two women, achieved a majority, Kishida won in a runoff.
According to the results, Kishida had greater support from party heavyweights who presumably preferred stability to the change urged by Kono, renowned as a maverick.
Suga's handling of the coronavirus outbreak and insistence on having the Summer Olympics in Tokyo enraged the public. The incoming leader is under pressure to change the party's high-handed character.
The long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party is in serious need of a boost in popular support ahead of the upcoming lower house elections in two months.
Under his "new capitalism," Kishida called for growth and distribution, claiming that the economy under Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had exclusively benefited giant corporations.
According to Yu Uchiyama, a political science professor at the University of Tokyo, fundamental diplomatic and security policies are unlikely to alter under the incoming administration.
All of the contenders advocate strong security connections between Japan and the United States and alliances with other like-minded democracies in Asia and Europe, in part to offset China's expanding might and the threat posed by nuclear-armed North Korea.
The vote on Wednesday was considered as a litmus test for the party's ability to emerge from Abe's shadow. His clout in administration and politics has effectively muzzled dissenting voices and pushed the party to the right.
Kishida is also considered as a candidate who can help Japan maintain a period of unprecedented political stability, despite fears that the country may revert to "revolving door" leadership.
Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told a telephone briefing ahead of the vote, "Concern is not about individuals but about the stability of Japanese politics." "It's about whether we're entering a period of instability and short-term prime ministership in Japanese politics," he said. "It makes progress on the agenda extremely difficult."
Suga is stepping down barely a year after taking over as a fill-in for Abe, who abruptly resigned due to health issues, ending his almost eight-year presidency, the longest in Japanese constitutional history.
