On Wednesday, the Liberal Democratic Party chose Fumio Kishida as its 27th president. In an extraordinary Diet session scheduled for Oct. 4, Kishida, 64, will be named prime minister. His term as the party’s president will end on September 30, 2024.
In a runoff, the former LDP Policy Research Council chairperson received 257 votes to defeat Taro Kono, the minister of administrative and regulatory reform, who received 170 votes.
Following Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s statement that he would not seek reelection to lead the ruling party, the LDP election was held.
Four candidates competed for 764 votes in the first round, half from Diet members and half from rank-and-file members and members of connected organisations.
Kishida received the most votes (256), while Kono, 58, received the second-most votes (255). Former Interior and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi came in second with 188 votes, followed by LDP Executive Acting Secretary General Seiko Noda with 63.
Because none of the four candidates received a majority of votes in the Diet, Kishida and Kono were forced to compete in a runoff, which included 382 votes from Diet members plus one vote from each of the LDP’s 47 prefectural chapters.
Many parliamentarians who voted for Takaichi in the first round likely voted for Kishida in the second round.
Kishida was foreign minister in former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s second government for four years and seven months, making him the second-longest postwar foreign minister after former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. After Suga, Kishida received the second-most votes in last year’s presidential election.
Kishida will become the 100th Prime Minister of Japan whenever he is appointed. The ordinal numbers used in the official counting of prime ministers are based on the time span between the appointment of a prime minister to form a government and the resignation of that prime minister. As a result, the number grows every time a “new” prime minister takes office, even if the same individual holds the position many times. As a result, the ordinal number is higher than the actual number of people who have held the position of Prime Minister.
