IT'S OFFICIAL; ABE WINS

UNCLAS TOKYO 005408 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV JA SUBJECT: IT'S OFFICIAL; ABE WINS REF: TOKYO 05362 ¶1. (U) Summary. As expected, SHINZO ABE won a decisive victory in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) election on September 20, defeating Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Finance Minister Sadokazu Tanigaki in a contest that was never really close. He became the 21st LDP president immediately upon the resignation of the current president, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, later in the day. ABE will succeed Koizumi as Prime Minister on September 26. End summary. ¶2. (U) Chief Cabinet Secretary SHINZO Abe, 51, became the youngest Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president in history on September 20, taking 66 percent of the vote in an election that was his to lose from the start. He needed to gain only a simple majority of the votes to win outright and avoid a runoff. ABE will succeed Koizumi as prime minister on September 26, when the current cabinet resigns en masse on the opening day of the extraordinary Diet session. He is expected to announce his choices for party executive posts on September 25, and his new cabinet lineup on September 26. Abe, who will take office as the first prime minister born after the end of World War II, is eligible to serve two three-year terms. In brief remarks, he promised to "carry on the torch of reform," ¶3. (U) Diet members began voting at 1400 local time, according to an Embassy Tokyo contact in the LDP's election office. The prefectural chapters began counting their ballots earlier in the day; timing the entry of the results into a database maintained at the national headquarters office in Tokyo to coincide with the Diet member voting. A general meeting of party members later in the afternoon accepted the resignations of Koizumi and other party executives from their party posts. The other outgoing executive members were Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe, General Affairs Council Chairman Fumio Kyuma, and Policy Affairs Research Council Chairman Hidenao Nakagawa. ¶4. (U) The candidates competed for a total of 703 votes; 403 from LDP Diet members and 300 allocated to the LDP's prefectural chapters on a proportional basis (reftel). One Diet member vote was invalidated during the counting. The voting breakdown followed recent polling trends fairly closely: Diet Prefectures Total Percent Abe 267 197 464 66.1 Aso 69 67 136 19.4 Tanigaki 66 36 102 14.5 Total 402 300 702 100.0 ¶5. (SBU) Comment. Aso and Tanigaki had been neck-and-neck in polls over the past few months, but Aso was expected to finish slightly stronger. According to NHK News, the campaign to deny ABE an even more lopsided victory seems to have gained some traction in recent weeks, leading Aso and Tanigaki to garner more votes than originally anticipated. Of the two, Tanigaki was generally regarded to have been a more vocal opponent of Abe's policy line, and a stronger showing might have been seen as a bell-weather of opposition to ABE within the party. His third place finish gives ABE a much clearer mandate. Voter turnout among LDP members in the prefectural chapters was 61.5 percent, down about 8 percent from the last LDP election three years ago, likely reflecting Abe's insurmountable lead. SCHIEFFER