Campaigning for Sunday’s national election in Japan is set to resume despite Friday’s assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s ruling coalition expected to maintain its majority in the upper house of the Diet, the country’s legislature.
Mr. Kishida said the campaign for the upper-house election would resume Saturday, and that doing so would show that Japan’s freedoms couldn’t be undermined through violence.
“Free and fair elections, which are the basis of democracy, must be absolutely defended,” he said.
Mr. Kishida ordered tighter security for candidates campaigning Saturday.
The election, in which inflation is the primary issue, also appears set to give Japan’s government a mandate for a sharp increase in the military budget.
Mr. Kishida has said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes it clear that military spending must be boosted substantially. “Today’s Ukraine may be tomorrow’s East Asia,” he said in a recent speech. Mr. Kishida's ruling coalition controls both houses of the legislature.
A panel in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party recently proposed raising the defense budget, which has long hovered around 1% of gross domestic product, to around 2% of GDP within five years.
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July 09, 2022 at 04:00AM
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