Japan\u2019s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country\u2019s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.
Takaichi replaces Shigeru Ishiba, ending a three-month political vacuum and wrangling since the Liberal Democratic Party\u2019s disastrous election loss in July.
Ishiba, who lasted only one year as prime minister, resigned with his Cabinet earlier in the day, paving the way for his successor.
Takaichi won 237 votes \u2014 four more than a majority \u2014 compared to 149 won by Yoshikoko Noda, head of the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, in the lower house, which elects the prime minister. As the results were announced, Takaichi stood up and bowed deeply.
The LDP\u2019s alliance with the Osaka-based rightwing Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin no Kai, ensured her premiership because the opposition is not united. Takaichi\u2019s untested alliance is still short of a majority in both houses of parliament and will need to court other opposition groups to pass any legislation \u2014 a risk that could make her government unstable and short-lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan\u2019s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country\u2019s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.Takaichi replaces Shigeru Ishiba, ending a three-month political vacuum and wrangling since the Liberal Democratic Party\u2019s disastrous election […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":47018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6728,3782,10507,913,2825,911,12210,2264,2959,5205,7263,11743,1198,2627,3174,13301,5807,12209,6988,594],"class_list":["post-47017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-alliance","tag-cabinet","tag-court","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-party","tag-election","tag-female","tag-government","tag-japan","tag-july","tag-kai","tag-majority","tag-parliament","tag-pm","tag-prime-minister","tag-results","tag-risk","tag-sanae","tag-successor","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47019,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47017\/revisions\/47019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}