Takaichi Launches New LDP Leadership Team

Tokyo, Sept. 16 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, launched a reshuffled leadership team of the party on Wednesday.

She kept key officials, including LDP Vice President Taro Aso, 85, and Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki, 73, in their posts with an aim to further stabilize her administration.

By retaining Aso, who is a main backer of Takaichi and heads the party's only remaining faction, and Suzuki, a member of the Aso faction, the prime minister is apparently trying to pave the way for her re-election as LDP president in the party's leadership poll in autumn next year.

Policy Research Council Chairman Takayuki Kobayashi, 51, who ran unsuccessfully against Takaichi in last year's LDP presidential election, was allowed to stay on, as were Election Strategy Committee Chairman Yasutoshi Nishimura, 63, and Executive Acting Secretary-General Koichi Hagiuda, 63, both former members of a now-defunct intraparty faction once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hideki Murai, 46, was appointed parliamentary affairs chief, succeeding Hiroshi Kajiyama, 70, who became head of the party's decision-making General Council.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]