Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made a big gamble on Sunday, conductin a snap poll only 110 days after she was elected to the post of Prime Minister, as the first woman to serve as the country’s executive head. It paid off, with voters offering a resounding mandate for her economic policies and tough stance on issues related to immigration and China.
Ms. Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party gained a landslide victory, securing a rare super-majority in the 465-member House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral Parliament, according to official sources. The party won 316 seats, up from 198, the first time since World War II that a Japanese political party has won more than two-thirds of the seats.
The result clears the way for 65year old to enact a conservative agenda on defense and social issues and to strengthen her position on the global stage, with President Trump having given her candidacy a ringing endorsement. The outcome is a remarkable reversal of fortune for Ms. Takaichi’s party, which governed Japan for much of the past seven decades but has suffered a series of bruising defeats in the recent past, leaving it in the unusual position of being a minority in both houses of Parliament.
