ABE, ALLIES OUT TORE ARM JAPAN
Japanese PM’s nationalist supermajority in parliament looking to push remilitarization
TOKYO— Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, buoyed by a huge election win for lawmakers who favor revising Japan’s postwar, pacifist constitution, is likely to push toward his long-held goal but will need to convince a divided public to succeed.
Parties in favor of amending the US-drafted charter won nearly 80 percent of the seats in Sunday’s lower house election, media counts showed.
That left the small Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan as the biggest group opposed to Abe’s proposed changes.
Formed by liberal members of the Democratic Party, it won 54 seats, a fraction of the ruling bloc’s two-thirds majority in the 465-member chamber.
Target of change
Abe said he wanted to get other parties, including Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s new conservative Party of Hope, on board and was not insisting on a target of changing the constitution by 2020 that he earlier floated.
“I want to deepen debate and have as many people as possible agree,” he said on Sunday. “We should put priority on that.”
Amending the charter’s pacifist Article 9 would be hugely symbolic for Japan (See relat
ed story). Many conservatives view it as a humiliating imposition after Japan’s defeat in 1945.
It would also be a victory for Abe, whose agenda of restoring traditional values, stressing obligations to the state over individual rights and loosening constraints on the military, centers on revising the constitution.
Legacy project
“Mr. Abe is trying to create a legacy. His first legacy project was to get the economy out of deflation,” said Jesper Koll, head of equities fund WisdomTree Japan.
“The second legacy is to change the constitution,” he said. “You can debate whether he has a mandate but what will make or break him ... is the constitutional issue.”
Any revision of the constitution requires support from twothirds of the members of each chamber of parliament and a majority in a referendum, with no minimum quorum.
Sales tax excuse
“I think that debate in Parliament will begin,” said Zentaro Kamei, a senior researcher at think-tank PHP Institute and a former lawmaker in Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
“But the reason given for this snap election was Abe’s proposal to change what sales tax hike revenues would be used for. If he starts talking about the constitution, people will say, ‘You didn’t ask me that,’” Kamei said.
Abe had proposed adding a clause to Article 9 to legitimize Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Read literally, Article 9 bans a standing military but has been interpreted to allow armed forces exclusively for self-defense.
Public divided
The parliament enacted laws in 2015 allowing Japan to exercise collective self-defense, or aid allies under attack, based on a reinterpretation of the constitution rather than a formal revision.
Opinion polls show the public is divided on Abe’s proposal.
An NHK survey before the election showed 32 percent in favor, 21 percent opposed and 39 percent unsure.
Media exit polls showed that, despite LDP’s big win, 51 percent of voters don’t trust the prime minister, a hangover from suspected cronyism scandals that eroded his support earlier this year.