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Roundup: Campaigning for leadership of Japan's largest opposition party kicks off

Xinhua, September 2, 2016 Adjust font size:

Official campaigning for leadership of Japan's largest opposition Democratic Party kicked off on Friday, with three registered candidates contending to convince caucus that they are the choice for gaining trust of voters and bringing the party back to power in future.

The three candidates -- the party's acting leader Renho, former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, and lower house lawmaker Yuichiro Tamaki -- will explain their goals and policies for the party in the next two weeks in debates to be held at 10 locations around Japan.

The leadership election is set to take place at an extraordinary party meeting on Sept. 15, with the party's Diet lawmakers, party-endorsed candidates for national elections, local lawmakers and lay members casting votes to decide the winner.

The new leader, with his or her term running through to September 2019, will be tasked with setting a new path for the party to regain the trust of voters disillusioned by its predecessor Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) when it was in power between 2009 and 2012.

The main focus of the race was expected to be on economic policies as well as the party's current election strategy of jointly campaigning with smaller opposition parties including the Japanese Communist Party, and how to respond to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's vigorous attempts to revise the pacifist Constitution.

Renho, who was once the country's most powerful female politician during the DPJ's rule, is backed by key members of the current party leadership.

In a speech on Friday, Renho said that she will stick to the war-renouncing Article 9 of Japan's Constitution, but added in view of the changes of time and emerging social problems, it is necessary to consider the inadequacies of the Constitution.

Renho also hinted she might review the party's strategy of campaigning together with smaller opposition parties, saying that she won't build a government together with parties that have different platforms and policies, eyeing for the next lower house election.

Maehara, who headed the now defunct DPJ in opposition in 2005 and 2006 and occupied several ministerial posts when the party was in power, said on Friday that discussions on the Constitution shall be held inside the party, and the party shall only ally with other parties that hold similar views with it on tennoism, Self-Defense Forces, Japan-U.S. alliance and consumption tax.

He was quoted by media as saying last month that the issue of constitutional amendment was not top priority among political tasks.

"The biggest mission for politics is to eliminate social unrest and the sense of stagnation," he said.

Tamaki, vice chairman of the party's Diet Affairs Committee and a former finance ministry bureaucrat, is supported by young lawmakers and some former Japan Innovation Party members. He is reportedly opposed to any constitutional revision allowing the country's Self-Defense Forces to fight wars overseas.

The Democratic Party was established in March through the merger of Ishin no To and the Democratic Party of Japan.

Current party leader Katsuya Okada declined to run for reelection following the party's failure in July's upper house election to prevent forces in favor of constitutional reform from securing a two-thirds majority. Endit