By Ankit Panda
Yes, Abe and the LDP are looking good after December’s elections, but they still won’t get constitutional reform.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s landslide victory in December’s snap election placed both him and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a powerful position. With the victory, Abe joins former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006) as the only leaders in decades to hold power for over two years. Since Koizumi, a streak of lame duck prime ministers barely managed to scrape out 12 months in office (one of these, of course, being Abe himself from 2006-2007). December’s result, while a coup, still leaves both Abe and the LDP in a difficult position to attain what many Japanese conservatives and nationalists consider a prime objective: total constitutional overhaul.
Should Abe and some LDP parliamentarians have their way, Japan’s post-war constitution would undergo a complete overhaul. Under the most recent LDP proposals, Japan’s emperor would be appointed “head of state” — an upgrade from the figurehead position he currently occupies and a throwback to the Meiji era. Similarly, the party would likely omit the language currently seen in Article 11 discussing fundamental and universal human rights, replacing it instead with a celebration of Japan’s unique historical heritage and cultural legacy. Article 9, similarly, which famously renounces Japan’s right to wage war except in self-defense would undergo a complete overhaul. The LDP would likely redefine Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) as a National Defense Force, an expeditionary force capable of undertaking operations abroad including international peacekeeping missions. These changes would stack on last year’s decision to reinterpret Article 9′s ban on collective self-defense.
Obviously, this sort of constitutional overhaul would be terribly destabilizing to the already frigid international relations of Northeast Asian states. Chinese and South Korean fears of a resurgent nationalist Japan would be amplified. Fortunately, Abe and the LDP, even with their powerful political situation after December’s election, are a long way from attaining constitutional reform.
Read the full story at The Diplomat