Japan’s ruling center-right party scored a supermajority in the House of Councillors election on July 10, claiming more than half of the 125 contested seats, in the wake of the assassination of former prime minister and party leader Shinzo Abe.
Abe’s factious Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won 119 of the 248 seats in the upper chamber of parliament, while its coalition partner Komeito secured 27 seats, broadcaster NHK reported.
This has secured for the party the two-thirds majority required to amendment Japan’s pacifist post-war Constitution. As part of Abe’s Japan-first policies, he was looking to revise Article 9, forbidding Japan from possessing its own military or forces with “war potential.”…