Eyewitness News: Ex-Japanese PM gets another chance

Reuters | 26 September 2012

TOKYO - Japan's main opposition party picked former prime minister and security hawk Shinzo Abe as its new leader, giving him another shot at the premiership and possibly alarming Beijing and Seoul, both locked in territorial disputes with Tokyo.

Opinion polls suggest that the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ousted in 2009 after more than 50 years of almost non-stop rule, will come first in a lower house election expected within months. That would put its leader in position to become the next prime minister.

Abe, 58, abruptly quit after just a year on office due to ill health in 2007. He won a run-off ballot against Shigeru Ishiba, 55, a conservative security expert.

All contenders in the race to lead the LDP had struck hawkish tones as a row with China flared this month after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government bought some disputed islets in the East China Sea from their private Japanese owner.

Abe was the most vocal in urging Tokyo take a tougher line in its territorial rows with China and South Korea.

"I think China will be alarmed as will Korea," said Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano. "I think this might push some of the leaders to start improving ties before the LDP comes to power."

Nakano said Abe's election could be good news for Noda's struggling Democrats, but others said voters disappointed by the ruling Democrats' three-year rule would still prefer the LDP.

"I don't think anyone wants to give the Democratic Party a second chance," said Katsuhiko Nakamura, executive director at think tank Asian Forum Japan."

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