Top Japan gov't spokesman Hayashi to run in ruling LDP leadership election
TOKYO, Sept. 16 Kyodo - Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday he will run in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election, while farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi also signaled his intention to join the race.
With former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi having also thrown his hat into the ring the same day and two others having either already announced or expected to announce their bids, a five-way contest on Oct. 4 to pick the successor of outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is taking shape before campaigning starts next Monday.
"I will draw on all of my experience and achievements to lead a new government that delivers both stability and growth," Hayashi wrote on social media, before pledging to work on keeping "the momentum of wage hikes that outpace rising living costs" at a press conference.
Having held the posts of foreign, defense, education and agriculture minister, the 64-year-old top government spokesman is considered one of the leading policy experts in the LDP. Hayashi is close to Ishiba's predecessor Fumio Kishida.
With the governing coalition of the LDP and its junior partner, Komeito, now a minority in both chambers of parliament, its need for support from opposition parties to pass bills is expected to be a key topic at the presidential election.
Hayashi said he will consider cooperating with opposition forces after determining what policies are needed, adding, "We should not put them in the wrong order."
Meanwhile, Koizumi, a 44-year-old House of Representatives lawmaker, told a regular news conference as a minister that he has informed local supporters of his plan to run.
"I would like to steadily build toward an official announcement," Koizumi, son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said.
Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato will head Koizumi's campaign headquarters at his request, the farm minister said. Kato vowed to support Koizumi at a separate press conference.
Kobayashi, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat educated at Harvard University and widely seen as a conservative, emphasized at his news conference that Japan's current goal of raising its defense costs to 2 percent of gross domestic product is "absolutely insufficient."
The 50-year-old also called for a "generational change" in the LDP and promised to "reboot" the party after its struggles to regain public trust damaged by a political funds scandal that led most of its intraparty factions to disband.
Former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi has already declared his candidacy for the upcoming election, and former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi, who aims to be Japan's first female prime minister, is expected to announce a bid this week.
Takaichi, a conservative lawmaker who shares the hawkish views of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Koizumi topped recent media polls on who is most suitable to lead the party, followed by Hayashi.
The five contenders, as well as Kato, ran in the previous LDP presidential election in September last year, in which Ishiba beat Takaichi in a runoff vote to become prime minister the following month.
The next LDP leadership election was originally scheduled for 2027 at the end of Ishiba's three-year term, but it was brought forward after he announced his intention earlier this month to resign to take responsibility for the ruling bloc's failure to retain control of the House of Councillors in an election on July 20.
==Kyodo
