Japan's Key Opposition Party Supports Leader Despite Infidelity Report

Yoshiaki Nohara and Akemi Terukina
·2-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Japan’s Democratic Party for the People will nominate its head Yuichiro Tamaki for the premiership vote as planned following a report about his personal life.

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DPP Secretary General Kazuya Shimba said that Tamaki has his party’s full backing to stay on as leader after a report earlier Monday alleging marital infidelity. Shimba said the party will continue to nominate Tamaki for prime minister both in the first round of voting and in an expected runoff.

“We’ve been helped many times by Tamaki, and without Tamaki, this party would not exist,” Shimba said while touching on an upper house election next year. “We’ve increased the number of our members in the lower house and changed the landscape but if we lose seats in the next election this will have been meaningless.”

The party’s support for Tamaki means the report is unlikely to change the expected outcome of Monday’s vote to select the nation’s prime minister. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is widely seen keeping his post due to the state of fragmentation among opposition parties and their failure to coalesce around an alternative candidate.

The DPP has emerged as an unlikely power broker following the loss of the ruling coalition’s majority in October’s election. While the party has said it won’t join the coalition and won’t vote for Ishiba to become premier, it is looking to work with his Liberal Democratic Party to promote the DPP’s key policies.

Tamaki’s fate as leader of the party is less clear after he acknowledged that the local media report was “largely true.” The scandal may affect his bargaining power over policy when negotiating with Ishiba’s LDP.

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