In the vote tallied at the convention, Renho received 503 weighted points out of a total of 849, eclipsing Maehara’s 230 points and Tamaki’s 116 points.
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Renho (centre) raises her fists with her party lawmakers after she was elected party leader at the party plenary meeting in Tokyo, Japan September 15, 2016.
Renho is one of a handful of women to grab the spotlight lately in Japan’s male-dominated corridors of power, along with hawkish Defence Minister Tomomi Inada and Yuriko Koike, a former defence minister who is now Tokyo’s first female governor.
“I will take the responsibility as the party leader to build the party into one that people can entrust with the country”, she said after winning Thursday’s race.
She has promised to lead a “revolutionary party” that will provide strong opposition to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s LDP.
Murata is the third woman to attain high political office in Japan in the past two months, although women are still woefully under-represented in the country’s parliament.
Murata’s attempts to rebuild the party’s credibility got off to a shaky start, just hours before her expected victory was confirmed on Thursday.
Born to a Japanese mother and Taiwanese father, the former TV announcer and mother of twins was embarrassed this week when she discovered she held Taiwanese as well as Japanese citizenship. She became a Japanese citizen in 1985 when the law was changed. “If Renho retains her Taiwan citizenship, she could become the target of undesirable suspicions regarding her relations with Taiwan”.
The law requires those with dual citizenship to choose one by age 22 and when opting for Japan, endeavour to renounce the other nationality.
“I am working hard in Japan, and I hope that Taiwanese will root for me”, she said. The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper described Murata’s confusion over her nationality as a “sorry state of affairs”. The Democratic Party has struggled to recover from a catastrophic three years in government that ended in 2012.
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“Although Taiwan is friendly toward Japan, it is in conflict with the Japanese standpoint regarding some issues, for instance, its ownership claims on the Senkaku islands”, the paper said. The party’s leaders were strongly criticized for their response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 and for raising taxes.
