Fukuda set to become Japan’s next prime minister

VETERAN moderate Yasuo Fukuda easily won election as Japan’s ruling party president yesterday, pledging to keep a pro-US foreign policy and improve ties with Asia after he almost certainly becomes prime minister later this week.

Mr Fukuda, the 71-year-old son of a prime minister from the 1970s and a former right-hand man to two premiers, won 63% of the vote among Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and delegates, beating his lone rival, former Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

The win essentially guarantees Mr Fukuda’s election as outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s successor in parliament tomorrow because of the LDP’s vast majority in the lower house, the more powerful of the two chambers that elects the premier.