original title:Japan’s upper house election results reveal ruling coalition retains dominance
Xinhua News Agency, Tokyo, July 11 (Reporter Guo Dan) The results of the 26th Senate election of the Japanese parliament were announced early on the 11th, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party alone won more than half of the re-election seats. In addition, the constitutional amendment forces won more than two-thirds of the seats in the Senate, breaking the “threshold” required for constitutional amendment motions.
Statistics show that among the 125 seats in this election, the Liberal Democratic Party in the ruling coalition won 63 seats, and the Komeito party won 13 seats, far exceeding the previously set “majority” target. Including the 70 seats that have not been re-elected, the ruling coalition has 146 seats in the Senate.
In addition to the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito Party, the Japan Restoration Association and the National Democratic Party, both of which are constitutional revision forces, won 12 and 5 seats in the election. Together with the 14 seats that have not been re-elected, the two parties have 31 seats in the Senate. The four parties advocating constitutional amendments won a total of 177 seats, more than two-thirds of the Senate’s 166 seats. Since then, the constitutional revision forces have had more than two-thirds of the seats in both the House of Representatives and the Japanese House of Representatives, meeting the conditions required to initiate a constitutional revision motion in the Diet.
However, the various parties in the constitutional revision forces are not entirely consistent in their pursuit of constitutional revision, and they also have different opinions on the specific content. The Liberal Democratic Party strongly advocates “to explicitly write the Self-Defense Forces into Article 9 of the Constitution” and “create a new emergency clause in the Constitution”, while the Komeito is relatively cautious.
On the evening of the 10th, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the revision of the constitution “is a very urgent issue” and that “in the future, discussions on the constitution will be strengthened in the Diet and more specific proposals will be put forward.” The leader of the Komeito party, Nazuo Yamaguchi, made it clear on the same day that although the Komeito party is considered to be a force for revision of the constitution, the party just does not oppose the revision of the constitution. “If we don’t get the understanding of the people, we will not initiate a motion to amend the constitution in the end.”
Japan’s upper house elections are held every three years, and half of the seats are re-elected each time. There are 124 seats in the current Senate, plus a by-election seat in the Kanagawa constituency, a total of 545 candidates are competing for 125 seats. Statistics show that the largest opposition party, the Cadets, won 17 seats, and the Communist Party of Japan won 4 seats. In addition, the Reiwa Shinsengumi won three seats, and the Social Democratic Party only had one. Independents and the other two parties won a combined seven seats. It is worth mentioning that 35 women were elected in the current Senate election, a record high.