Japan’s ruling party has picked conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi as its head on Saturday, a move set to make her the country’s first female prime minister.
The new LDP president is likely to succeed Shigeru Ishiba as leader of the world’s fourth-biggest economy because the party, which has governed Japan for almost all the postwar period, is the biggest in parliament.
Takaichi, the only woman among the five LDP candidates, beat a challenge from the more moderate Shinjiro Koizumi, who was bidding to become the country’s youngest leader in the modern era.
A former internal affairs minister with an expansionary economic agenda, Takaichi inherits a party in crisis.
“Recently, I have heard harsh voices from across the country saying we don’t know what the LDP stands for anymore,” Takaichi said in her speech before the second-round vote.
“That sense of urgency drove me. I wanted to turn people’s anxieties about their daily lives and the future into hope,” she added.
Takaichi says her hero is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister.
REUTERS