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Shinzo Abe Re-elected as Japanese Prime Minister

by VOA News

   Japan's lower house of parliament has re-elected Shinzo Abe as prime
   minister.

   His re-election Wednesday comes just days after the 63-year-old Abe's
   ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, the
   Komeito Party, won a decisive victory in a parliamentary election,
   maintaining its two-thirds majority in the Diet. He is expected to
   retain his current cabinet ministers.

   Abe dissolved the Diet in September and called snap elections, amid
   increasing support for his hardline stance against the North Korean
   nuclear threat. The October 22 victory capped a sharp turnaround for
   Abe, whose approval ratings fell near 30 percent just a few months
   earlier thanks to domestic political scandals alleging that he used his
   office to help friends and family.

   The victory will boost Abe's efforts to revise Japan's post-war,
   pacifist constitution that limits the country's military to act purely
   in self-defense. It could also clear the way for Abe to win another
   three-year term as leader of the ruling LDP next September, which would
   keep him in power until 2021, and make him Japan's longest-serving
   prime minister. He first took office in December, 2012.