Former Prime Minister Noda, elected main opposition leader in Japan, vows to seize power

Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has vowed to lead Japan’s main opposition party into government after winning its leadership election, as he prepares for a possible snap election likely to be called by the winner of the ruling party’s presidential contest later this week.

Noda, 67, campaigned to reorient the left-leaning Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan toward the center, beating former Cabinet Secretary-General Yukio Edano, a 60-year-old liberal lawmaker and founder of the party, in a runoff vote. He won 232 points to Edano’s 180, Kyodo News reported.

“We will break the majority held by the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party. To do so, we will maximize the number of opposition seats,” said the former prime minister of the defunct Democratic Party of Japan from 2011 to 2012 at a press conference after his victory.

With a lower house election “unequivocally” on the way, Noda said he would name the party executives on Tuesday morning. The veteran lawmaker declined to give details about his choice, but said it is “very important that we form a team that offers a sense of renewal” to complement his familiarity with the electorate.

The race was expected to go to a runoff between the two veteran lawmakers as the party seeks to present an experienced alternative to the next leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, who will be elected on Friday.

The four CDPJ candidates also included current leader Kenta Izumi and Harumi Yoshida, a first-term House lawmaker and the only woman in the running. Both were eliminated after finishing third and fourth respectively in the first round.

In recent elections, the CDPJ has struggled to attract voters, in part due to its alignment with the Japanese Communist Party, which advocates radical policies such as abolishing the Self-Defense Forces and the imperial system.

Noda, a figure on the party’s right who plans to target unaffiliated voters in a bid to seize power, said he would “hold serious talks with all (opposition) parties” once his team is in place.

Analysts say the type of cooperation the party establishes with other opposition groups in the upcoming elections will be crucial to Noda’s ability to gain ground on whoever succeeds Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the helm of the LDP.

Kishida’s replacement is seen as likely to dissolve the lower house to call a general election later this year as the party seeks to distance itself from the secret funds scandal uncovered late last year.

The LDP, which has held power almost uninterruptedly since 1955, has faced intense scrutiny after some of its factions, including one previously led by Kishida, failed to declare some of their income from fundraising parties and created slush funds.

As a result, Noda and the other CDPJ candidates have vowed to clean up politics, including fighting “hereditary politics” in Japan, targeting some candidates in the ruling party race who are children of former lawmakers.

But in his bid to occupy the center of the field, Noda risks criticism that his politics are indistinguishable from those of the PLD. At the press conference after his victory, he pointed to his support for progressive policies, such as the separation of surnames for married couples and his plans to reform the transparency of political spending, as differences.

In the first round, the four competed for 740 points from a mix of party lawmakers, endorsed candidates and grassroots members. Noda led with 267 points, followed by Edano with 206, while Izumi and Yoshida received 143 and 122 points, respectively.

The vote marked the end of Izumi’s nearly three-year tenure as leader. His time there had been marked by a failure to broaden the party’s support, underscored by the fact that the CDPJ-backed candidate for the Tokyo gubernatorial election in July finished third, behind a relatively unknown and social media-savvy former mayor.

During the leadership race, the four candidates were divided on several policy issues, including consumption tax. Noda and Edano declined to clarify whether they would cut the current 10% rate, while Izumi and Yoshida argued for reducing the tax on food products.

As prime minister, Noda made a politically sensitive decision: raising the consumption tax by 5 percentage points from the current 5%. The unpopularity of this policy contributed to the DPJ’s heavy defeat in the 2012 election, which returned the LDP of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to power.