Takaichi To Be Reelected As Japan PM At Diet After LDP's Huge Election Win

TOKYO, Feb 18 (Bernama-Kyodo) -- Sanae Takaichi is set to be reelected as Japan's prime minister in a parliamentary vote on Wednesday as the Diet convenes a special session following her Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) historic landslide victory in the Feb 8 House of Representatives election, Kyodo News reported.

Before the start of the 150-day session, Takaichi's Cabinet resigned en masse, as required by the Constitution, before the launch of her new Cabinet later in the day.

Along with LDP executives, all the ministers, including Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, are expected to retain the posts they held in Takaichi's first Cabinet formed after she became LDP leader and subsequently prime minister in October.

Takaichi is expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday night to explain her "responsible yet aggressive" fiscal policy and plan to suspend the consumption tax on food products for two years, which the LDP pledged during campaigning for the general election.

The powerful lower house is also expected to elect Eisuke Mori, a veteran LDP lawmaker and former justice minister, as its speaker and Keiichi Ishii, a member of the chamber's main opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, as vice speaker.

Ishii is a former leader of the Komeito party, which established the CRA last month with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan for their lower house members. In October, Komeito ended its 26-year partnership with the LDP, which then formed a new ruling coalition with the Japan Innovation Party later that month.

In the general election, the conservative LDP gained a record 316 of the 465 seats in the lower house, up from 198 before the contest, the first time a single party has secured a supermajority in the postwar era.

Takaichi called a snap election by dissolving the chamber at the outset of this year's ordinary Diet session on Jan. 23 in a bid to capitalise on high support ratings for her Cabinet and improve the LDP-JIP camp's standing in the lower house.

The centre-right JIP, known as Nippon Ishin, gained 36 seats, up from 34 prior to the election.

Since the regular parliamentary session, which lasts 150 days and can be extended, ended in just one day, the Diet will convene the 150-day special session from Wednesday through July 17, with deliberations expected to initially focus on a draft initial budget for fiscal 2026 starting in April.

The lower house can overrule the House of Councillors to push through bills with the support of two-thirds of lawmakers. In the upper chamber, the ruling bloc remains in a minority after the LDP's setback in the July 2025 election under Takaichi's predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba.

The lower house election gave a boost to Takaichi and her party toward delivering on their policies, including her expansionary fiscal measures.

Takaichi, known for her conservative political stance and hawkish security views, has expressed readiness to work toward amending the pacifist Constitution, the LDP's long-held goal.

A high procedural bar is set, however, for revision of the supreme law, with proposals needing support from two-thirds of legislators in both chambers of parliament before being put to a national referendum.

The joint leaders of the CRA stepped down after it secured only 49 seats in the lower house contest, less than a third of the 167 it held prior to the election, with Junya Ogawa chosen as the new leader last week to embark on a revamp and generational shift of the party.

-- BERNAMA-KYODO