The head of Japan’s largest opposition party said he will make Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s management of the world’s third-largest economy a key issue in seeking to unseat him in next month’s elections.
The elections will be a fight to win back Japan, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe told reporters at the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) headquarters on Friday in Tokyo after parliament was dissolved for the Dec. 16 vote, adding he “will do all I can to end the political chaos and stalled economy.”
Public support for Noda plummeted as he pushed through a bill doubling Japan’s 5 percent sales tax in a bid to rein in the world’s largest public debt and restarted some nuclear reactors following last year’s disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Opinion polls show that his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is set to lose power, making way for the country’s seventh leader in six years.
In a nationally televised press conference, Noda said he decided to call the elections after reaching deals to pass a deficit financing bill and electoral revisions. Polls show four-fifths of voters support neither of the main parties, signaling that the next prime minister may have to form a coalition government.
Abe advocates increased monetary easing to reverse more than a decade of falling prices and said he would consider revising a law guaranteeing the independence of the Bank of Japan. In an economic policy plan issued on Friday, the LDP said it would pursue policies to attain 3 percent nominal growth. The party governed Japan for more than half a century until ousted by the DPJ in 2009.
He would tackle deflation with different policies than those the LDP devised in the past, Abe said.
Abe was re-elected as LDP leader in September. He resigned after serving a year as prime minister in 2006 and 2007, blaming a digestive complaint from which he says he has recovered.
Noda said the elections are about whether Japan can go forward or return to the old politics of the past, and called for maintaining the central bank’s independence.
Abe has taken a harder line than Noda on ties with China that have frayed over rival claims to an island chain in the East China Sea. Abe favors building on the islands — known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyutais (釣魚台) in China and Taiwan (which also claims them) — and this week sparked a complaint from China when he met the Dalai Lama and called for democracy in Tibet.
Healthy nationalism is necessary, but can become xenophobia if taken to extremes, Noda said. Japan must pursue diplomatic and security policy more calmly and realistically, he added.
While calling for a rebuilding of trust with the US, Abe says he opposes promising to end all tariffs as a condition to joining US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks.
Noda said he will pursue participation in the talks and favors reaching a trilateral free-trade pact with South Korea and China. He reiterated a pledge to end Japan’s
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in