Men advance in Japanese leadership elections – Ikuririn

Yoshihide Suga held the position of LDP leader and prime minister for only one year, with Fumio Kishida and Taro Kono as candidates for the post.

From the start, the choice was between four candidates, in addition to Suga and Kono also two women, Sana Takaishi for the right and former Feminist Minister for Gender Equality Seiko Noda. As expected, none of them advanced from the first round of voting on Wednesday.

Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida lost in the party leadership election against Suga last year. Vaccination Minister Taro Kono is one of Japan’s most famous politicians.

Parliament is expected to approve who wins the party leader’s vote as the country’s new prime minister within a few days.

The position of opinion was unusually even, in part due to the fact that the most influential sections of the party did not stand behind any of the candidates, which means that members are free to vote for their preferred.

The fact that there were two women among the candidates was unusual in a country that had never had a prime minister, with few women in high politics.

In the first ballot, 382 Liberal Party politicians and a number of party members voted.

If no candidate obtains a majority in the first round, the two candidates with the most votes advance to the second round, which is held immediately. Then the politicians vote again as the party representative from each of Japan’s 47 regions.