Shinzo Abe, the man widely tipped to become Japan’s next leader, announced his bid for the premiership on Friday with policies that include sweeping reforms to the country’s pacifist Constitution.
Abe, one of the most hawkish members of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is running against two other senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic party, the Foreign Minister, Taro Aso (65) and the Finance Minister, Sadakazu Tanigaki (61).
But the two other men are considered outsiders in a contest that many believe will end in a comprehensive victory for the 51-year-old Abe when LDP members and MPs vote for their new leader on September 20.
The winner of the election for LDP president automatically becomes prime minister by virtue of the party’s majority in the lower house of the Japanese Parliament.
”As the next LDP president, I’d like to take the lead in putting revision of the Constitution on the political agenda,” he said hours before confirming his decision to run. ”I’d like to draft a new Constitution with my own hands.”
He said Japan’s security would continue to depend on maintaining strong relations with the United States: ”The Japan-US alliance is the foundation of Japan’s diplomacy and national security. We want to make efforts to further increase the relationship of trust and reciprocity.”
Although he has voiced concern about China’s growing military power, Abe is also expected to call for efforts to improve ties with Beijing. Relations have deteriorated dramatically under Koizumi partly because of his insistence on paying his respects to Japanese war-dead, including convicted war criminals, at a nationalist shrine in Tokyo.
Abe, who is believed to have made a secret visit to Yasukuni shrine last spring, has refused to say whether he would risk enraging Seoul and Beijing by paying his respects there as prime minister.
”We need to try to improve relations with China and South Korea, but the efforts must be mutual,” he said.
A poll published on Friday in the Nihon Keizai financial newspaper put support for Abe at more than 70% among his party’s MPs, well ahead of his rivals. Parliament is expected to ratify the winner as prime minister two days after the vote.
Abe, who made the long-anticipated announcement during a trip to Hiroshima, would become Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister. As chief Cabinet secretary, he has played a prominent role as the government’s official spokesperson on everything from fiscal policy to Tokyo’s troubled relations with Beijing and Pyongyang.
He entered the public consciousness in 2002 as a vocal supporter of the families of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 1980s.
Considered by many as Koizumi’s heir apparent, Abe would be expected to continue the reforms started by his predecessor, including changes to the Constitution that would give Japanese troops a greater role overseas.
In his recently published best-selling book, Beautiful Nation: Towards a Japan with Confidence and Pride, Abe vowed to give the country’s self-defence forces a much more active role in international disputes, and called for the creation of a Japanese version of the CIA to counter the threat to Japan, a supporter of the Iraq war, from international terrorism.
He advocates replacing the Constitution, authored by US occupation forces after the war, with a document that recognises Japan’s right to come to the aid of allies such as the US and Britain.
Abe hails from distinguished political stock. His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a postwar prime minister and his father, the late Shintaro Abe, served as foreign minister in the early 1980s.
His penchant for British tailoring has won him awards for his dress sense, and his softly spoken manner and devotion to his family have earned him an enthusiastic following among women voters. – Guardian Unlimited Â