Japan election win to give Shinzo Abe chance to become longest serving PM

Shinzo Abe will have a chance of becoming Japan’s longest serving prime minister if he wins tomorrow’s election.

Shinzo Abe on the campaign trail in Saitama this week. Picture: AFP

Japan’s Shinzo Abe is heading ­towards history, which if he wins a third consecutive three-year term tomorrow could see him overtake Eisaku Sato as the country’s longest-­serving prime minister.

Sato ruled for seven years and eight months from 1964. Mr Abe, now the third longest serving PM, has served for six years and a month in two stints as prime minister and would become the longest serving in June 2019.

He has an ambitious unfinished agenda topped by restoring the country’s economy to health — with recent promising progress causing the stock market to smash a 20-year record — and by changing the pacifist constitution so Japanese forces can be ­deployed to help allies in combat.

If he does win, he will preside over the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, a great platform to celebrate the revival of Japan.

He called the election at short notice, catching the opposition off guard to the extent that it threw its support behind a non-parliamentarian, Tokyo’s first woman governor, Yuriko Koike.

Ms Koike, a former defence minister in Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, swiftly set up a new Party of Hope. But she is not even standing at the election. And the opposition vote is split, with new grouping the Constitutional Democratic Party also gaining support.

The missiles fired over Japan by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un acted as a shot in the arm for the Prime Minister, who has long taken a tough stand on the unruly neighbour, including championing the families of Japanese ­abducted by North Korean agents in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Abe’s personal ratings sunk to 26 per cent in July, when he was hit by corruption scandals, but have since doubled — thanks considerably to the perception that he is the leader needed at a time of such threat from North Korea,

The Nikkei newspaper yesterday published a survey showing that Mr Abe is on track for a decisive victory, but still slightly short of the two-thirds majority in the parliament that he needs to be ­assured of changing the constitution to implement his agenda.

The survey forecast the LDP would win between 210 and 306 of the 465 seats, with its Buddhist partner Komeito winning 32 to 38. The likely outcome would be just under 300, with 310 needed to change the constitution.

Ms Koike is promising to postpone the next GST hike, from 8 per cent to 10 per cent — due in a year’s time but already postponed twice. Mr Abe is now promising that 40 per cent of the funds raised will go to education as part of a program to reverse the country’s demographic decline. The rest will go to debt repayment.

Manuel Panagiotopoulos, the managing director of think tank Australian and Japanese Economic Intelligence, said yesterday that since the Japanese economy had been outperforming, a change of government was most unlikely.

Growth in consumer ­demand jumped by 1.7 per cent in the first half of the year after averaging 0.5 per cent the previous decade.

“Abe has a particularly strong positive feeling towards Australia, and has expanded the co­operation between our two countries to new levels,” Mr Panagiotopoulos said

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Australia-Japan treaty of commerce signed by Robert Menzies and Mr Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi.