Japan’s Diet Elects Ishiba, Again

Japan new new government

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
November 11, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

The 215^th Diet was convoked on November 11. It elected Shigeru Ishiba, President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), as 103rd Prime Minister of Japan without a simple majority in the House of Representatives. Ishiba immediately appointed his new cabinet. But with the loss of seats and the simple majority, Ishiba and the LDP face difficulty in completing any legislative plans through a hung parliament.
 
The 215^th Diet is a “special session” stipulated in the Constitution of Japan. Article 54 of the Constitution requires that the Diet be convoked within 30 days after a general election of the House of Representatives. The cabinet resigns en masse on this convocation per Article 70.
 
Accordingly, all the ministers in the Ishiba Cabinet resigned on the morning of October 11. Each House of the Diet then held an election for prime minister in the afternoon. The House of Councillors elected Ishiba with a simple majority.
 
In the House of Representatives, no candidate obtained a simple majority in the first round. For the first time in 30 years, the House held a run-off between the top two vote-getters, Ishiba and Yoshihiko Noda, the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ). Ishiba won with 221 votes versus 160 for Noda. Eighty-four votes were invalid: these were cast by members of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) and Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai) for their leaders, who were not eligible for the run-off.
 
Following his afternoon election, Ishiba formed his new cabinet early in the evening.  There were three vacancies to fill. The Minister of Justice and the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had both lost their seats in the general election for the House of Representatives. The Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Trade and Tourism, Tetsuo Saito, resigned to assume the position of chief representative of Komeito. The other ministers remained in the same positions as in the previous Ishiba cabinet.
 
Again, the Ishiba Cabinet faces real difficulty in attaining any policy goals. The leading coalition of the LDP and Komeito lost almost seventy seats from 290 to 221, less than a half of the 465 seats in the House of Representatives. The opposition parties occupy over half the seats.
 
However, notwithstanding their aggregate numerical dominance, the opposition parties failed to unite behind one candidate for nomination as the new prime minister. If all the opposition lawmakers and some independents had voted for Noda, Noda may have outgained Ishiba and become prime minister. However, the DPP and Ishin refused to vote for him even before the election, because of basic policy differences with the CDPJ. They knew that their action would benefit Ishiba and the LDP.
 
The DPP also has had to deal with its own troubles. On the morning of the election for prime minister, a weekly magazine reported a scandal: the DPP’s leader, Yuichiro Tamaki, had engaged in an extramarital affair with a former bikini model. Tamaki admitted that most of the report was true. Tamaki now teeters on the edge of losing his leadership post.
 
Although Tamaki refused to join the leading coalition, the LDP continues to target the DPP as a partner from time to time on the LDP’s legislative initiatives. Indeed, the LDP has begun talks with the DPP at the policy leader level. The DPP has insisted on raising the annual earnings threshold for the imposition of income tax from 1.03 million yen and on activating “trigger clause” to automatically reduce gasoline tax.
 
Another concern for the LDP is that the structure of the standing committees will work against it. The leading coalition of the LDP and Komeito had occupied 15 chairs out of all 17 standing committees before the general election. But the coalition now has only ten.
 
The CDPJ gained the chair of the Committee on Budget where any kind of issue is up for grabs, including scandals on the management of political funds. The chair has the power to set the agenda, to order the prime minister to answer questions from the opposition committee members, and to terminate debate and take votes.
 
Former CDPJ leaders occupy other important posts. Kenta Izumi can control the Committee on Fundamental National Polices in his capacity as chair. This committee is the forum for opposition party leaders to hurl questions at the prime minister in “Question Time.” Yukio Edano is now the chair of the Commission on the Constitution.  Any progress on the constitutional amendment will be slow, given the CDPJ’s reluctance on the matter.
 
The current special Diet session will end on November 14. After the session, Ishiba plans to go abroad to attend the APEC Summit meeting in Peru and the G20 meeting in Brazil. Then, he hopes to have an opportunity to meet with U.S. President-elect, Donald Trump, in Washington, DC or Florida. Ishiba’s telephone call with Trump after his victory led Ishiba to believe that Trump was a man with whom he could have frank conversations.
 
However, Trump is likely to demand that Japan make further expenditures for its own defense. Japan pledged 43 trillion yen for its defense budget for between FY 2023 and FY 2027 to raise defense expenditures to 2% of Japan’s GDP. If Ishiba tries to increase the budget to meet such a demand, the LDP-Komeito coalition lacks the simple majority in the House of Representatives to approve an increase on its own.
 
Ishiba plans to call an extraordinary session of the Diet after returning, in which he hopes to pass the supplementary budget bill to implement the economic stimulus package. In the ordinary session that begins next January, the Ishiba administration will have to pass an annual budget by the end of March to avoid a government shutdown.
 
Previous cabinets without a simple majority in one of the two Houses had a hard slog to obtain necessary consents from the opposition parties. Ishiba’s Cabinet will be tested in a similar way. If Ishiba fails to gain cooperation from the opposition parties to pass the bills in the Diet, it is likely that the LDP will want to replace Ishiba with someone who they believe can lead the party to win the next general election. Domestic politics and international uncertainty will make Ishiba’s tenure challenging, and maybe short.

Seats of Groups in the House of Representatives
	Last session			Current
LDP	258	290		197		221
Komeito	32			24
CDPJ	99	163		149		232
Ishin	44			38
DPP	7			28
JCP	10			8
Reiwa	3			9
Others	12			12
Total	465
Election of Nominating P.M. in the House of Representatives
First Round					Run-off
Ishiba (LDP)			221		Ishiba		221
Noda (CDPJ)			151		Noda		160
Baba (Ishin)			38		Invalid		84
Tamaki (DPP)			28
Yamamoto (Reiwa)			9
Tamura (JCP)			8
Others			10
Total			465		Total		465