Pro-casino PM Kishida keeps majority in Japan election

Nov 01, 2021 Newsdesk Japan, Latest News, Top of the deck  

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Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives following Sunday’s general election. His party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and coalition partner Komeito secured 293 of the 465 seats in that chamber of parliament, according to preliminary results.

The ruling camp had a total of 305 seats before Sunday’s election. At least 233 seats are needed for a majority in Japan’s House of Representatives.

Mr Kishida (pictured in a file photo) became prime minister on October 4. He succeeded Yoshihide Suga as government leader, after Mr Suga stepped down as head of the LDP.

Following his appointment as prime minister, Mr Kishida announced a general election.

Mr Kishida is regarded as a supporter of the country’s casino resort policy. Speaking in parliament on October 11, Mr Kishida said Japan’s integrated resort (IR) policy was “an important measure to push Japan to be an advanced tourism country.”

Japanese integrated resorts should offer “not only a casino but also MICE and large hotels to entertain families, together with stringent gambling addiction measures,” he added at the time, stressing his government would “take necessary procedures to realise integrated resorts”.

The Japanese government opened on October 1 the application period for local authorities to pitch as host for a casino resort, and announced the weighting it will give when scoring such requests.

Under the liberalisation programme, up to three resorts will be permitted nationally in a first phase. Currently, only three local communities are in the running for respectively hosting a large-scale IR. They are: Osaka, Nagasaki, and Wakayama.

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