By Elaine Lies and Ju-min Park
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, exchanged fist shakes with lawmakers after being formally elected by parliament on Monday, and public broadcaster NHK said he would dissolve the body next week and call an election on October 31st.
Earlier, Kishida, a 64-year-old former foreign minister with an image of a consensus maker, revealed a cabinet dominated by allies of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Finance Minister Taro Aso.
While he needs to outline guidelines for dealing with the pandemic and fulfill his promise to close the income gap, Kishida must first rally the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD) for the next parliamentary election.
NHK said Kishida will announce the date of the vote at his first press conference as prime minister at 9 pm local time and that he will dissolve parliament on October 14th.
His plan to call an election so quickly was taken as a surprise.
In addition to taking advantage of the honeymoon period that the electorate usually grants new governments, analysts said Kishida probably doesn’t want to waste time because of the risks of the pandemic.
“He probably wants to stay ahead of any further deterioration in the Covid-19 situation,” Corey Wallace, a Japanese policy expert at Kanagawa University, told Reuters.
“While the progress of the vaccination campaign has clearly helped to contain the fifth wave, we cannot be absolutely certain that a sixth wave will not occur any closer to winter,” he added.
New coronavirus cases in Tokyo reached 87 on Monday, the lowest since Nov. 2 of last year.
Yoshihide Suga, Kishida’s predecessor, had 70 percent support shortly after taking office a year ago, but has been rocked by criticism of his handling of the pandemic. Following Suga’s decision to step down and make way for a new face, Kishida defeated three LDP leadership candidates last week, setting the stage for Parliament to officially elect him on Monday.
Of the 20 names in Kishida’s new cabinet, 13 have no agency experience, in line with the new prime minister’s promise to give new people opportunities, but many of the most important posts have been awarded to Abe’s or Aso’s allies, and none to the three women chosen for the cabinet.
“He won the election with the support of Abe and Aso, so it’s time for him to return the favor, it’s not time to break with them,” said political analyst Atsuo Ito.
(By Antoni Slodkowski, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Ju-min Park, Elaine Lies, Sakura Murakami, Chang-ran Kim and Ritsuko Ando)
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