TOKYO: Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary SUGA Yoshihide would become the first leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who does not belong to a party faction nor is from a political dynasty if he wins the party leadership election scheduled for Sept. 14.

Suga’s rivals in the race, former LDP Secretary-General ISHIBA Shigeru and LDP Policy Research Council Chairman KISHIDA Fumio, have both succeeded their fathers in their constituencies and lead their respective factions in the party. Such has been the norm for LDP presidents in the past three decades, with most chiefs being in the second or third generation of politicians in their families.

The dependence on factions reflects the need to amass a large number of supporting lawmakers to vie for the party presidency.

Suga was also once part of a faction, having belonged to the group now led by former LDP General Council Chairman Wataru Takeshita. However, he left the faction to support the LDP leadership bid of former Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiroku Kajiyama in 1998.

He then joined the group now led by Kishida, but split ways in 2009 after Suga began to take issue with the nature of factions. Since then, Suga has called for the elimination of factions and have remained nonaligned.

Candidates in past LDP leadership elections have left their factions before their campaigns, but such acts were in name only as their factions effectively supported their bids.

Meanwhile, Kishida is the head of a faction of 47 lawmakers, while Ishiba leads 19 lawmakers in his own faction.

Despite the lone wolf attitude, Suga often meets with multiple groups of young and middle-ranking lawmakers not aligned with any faction, and is known for taking good care of them. Some 30 such lawmakers comprise what is viewed in effect as the “Suga faction.”

All LDP leaders since former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who became president in 1991, have become politicians by relying on their family members’ supporters or popularity. Of them, all except Yoshiro Mori had fathers who were members of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament. Mori’s father was a town mayor.

Suga’s father was a member of the town assembly in his hometown of Ogachi, Akita Prefecture, northeastern Japan. But the chief cabinet secretary did not rely on his political legacy and instead began his political career by serving as a secretary to a lawmaker, then as a city assembly member of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.

Suga became a national lawmaker in 1996, being elected to the Lower House from an electoral district in Kanagawa.

If elected, he will also become the first LDP leader to graduate from Hosei University, as well as the first to be from Akita Prefecture.

The only other LDP leader, former Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki from Iwate Prefecture, was from the Tohoku northeastern region.

Meanwhile, Kishida’s father and grandfather were both Lower House lawmakers. Ishiba’s father served as the home affairs minister and governor of Tottori Prefecture, western Japan.

JIJI Press