24/06/2025

TUESDAY | JUNE 24, 2025

8

Tokyo voters punish ruling party in key election

South Korea names civilian defence minister SEOUL: President Lee Jae Myung named veteran lawmaker Ahn Gyu-back as South Korea’s first civilian defence minister in 64 years yesterday, making good on a campaign promise made after December’s martial law shook faith in the military. Lee, who took office on June 4 after winning a snap election called when former president Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office over the martial law attempt, also named 10 other Cabinet ministers including former UN ambassador Cho Hyun as foreign minister and a North Korea diplomacy advocate, Chung Dong young, as unification minister, his office said. Yoon’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, played a leading role in recommending and planning the martial law, and is in jail amid an ongoing trial on insurrection charges. The nominations, which do not require parliamentary approval but will be reviewed in at-times contentious hearings, come as Lee works to form a new Cabinet and staff his office. He took office the day after the election without a transition period, as Yoon was ousted in April for breaching the duties of his office with December’s martial law declaration, which he reversed after parliament defied him. Lee has worked with an acting prime minister and a Cabinet carried over from Yoon’s administration as he tackles the job of uniting a bitterly divided country and formulating a response to new United States tariffs. He has pledged to pursue diplomacy pillared on pragmatism with a focus on support for the export-heavy economy’s global companies in the fields of cars, semiconductors and steelmaking. Earlier this month he named a long-term member of parliament and a key political ally, Kim Min-seok, to be his prime minister, a post that requires parliamentary approval. – Reuters Colombian farmers detain soldiers BOGOTA: More than 50 Colombian soldiers were being held captive on Sunday by residents of a guerilla-controlled region in the southwest of the country, the army said. A first platoon of soldiers was carrying out an operation in El Tambo, a municipality part of an area known as the Micay Canyon – a cocaine producing enclave – when civilians detained them on Saturday. On Sunday another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed toward El Plateado, another town in the region. “As a result of both events, a total of four non commissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty,” the army said. In conflict-ridden regions of Colombia, some illegal groups at times order civilians to carry out actions to impede the advance of security forces. They are usually released hours later after the intervention of human rights organisations. General Federico Alberto Mejia said in a video that it was a “kidnapping” by guerillas who had “infiltrated” the community. The army has maintained that the farmers receive orders from the so-called Central General Staff, the main FARC dissident group that did not sign the 2016 peace agreement with the then government. President Gustavo Petro on Sunday urged farmers to “stop believing in armed groups who obey foreigners”, referring to the guerillas’ alleged ties to Mexican cartels. “We want to spread peace, but freeing the soldiers, who are their own children, is imperative,” said the leftist president. – AFP

o LDP takes a knock

TOKYO: Voters in Tokyo decisively knocked Japan’s ruling party from its position as the largest group in the city assembly, results showed yesterday, a warning sign for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s unpopular government before elections next month. Japanese media said it was a record-low result in the key local election for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has led the country almost continuously since 1955. Public support for Ishiba, who took office in October, has been at rock-bottom for months, partly because of high inflation, with rice prices doubling over the past year. The LDP took 21 Tokyo assembly seats in Sunday’s vote, including three won by candidates previously affiliated with the party but not officially endorsed following a political funding scandal. This breaks the party’s previous record low of 23 seats from 2017, according to the Asahi Shimbun and other local media. Tomin First no Kai, founded by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, increased its seats in the 127-member assembly to 31, becoming the largest party. “This was a very tough election,” Shinji Inoue, head of the LDP’s Tokyo chapter, said on Sunday as exit polls showed a decline in the party’s seats. The funding scandal “may have affected” the result, while policies to address inflation “didn’t reach voters’ ears very well” with opposition parties also pledging to tackle the issue, Inoue said. Within weeks Ishiba will face elections for parliament’s upper house, with reports saying the national ballot could be held on July 20. Voters angry with rising prices and political scandals deprived the 68-year-old’s ruling coalition of a majority in the powerful lower The figure was one of Argentina’s most prominent politicians in the last two decades – leading opposition leader and former first lady and two-time president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was put under house arrest last week in a six-year sentence for corruption. It means the end of a political career, at least formally, for the 72-year-old, a divisive populist whose big government model is now being dismantled by the “chainsaw” austerity of libertarian President Javier Milei. The sentence also bans Kirchner, who had announced plans to run for Buenos Aires province’s legislature, from public office. That second-floor balcony – the one place from which Kirchner can now rally her base due to her city apartment lockdown – is becoming a focal point for supporters on the Peronist left, with her detention putting a spotlight back on her as a symbol of resistance to Milei. “It gives Cristina’s leadership political clout that she was losing,” said Camila Perochena, a historian at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. “This gives her extra life.” Kirchner’s house arrest has brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets of

DPP Tokyo chapter chairman Tetsushi Isozaki (centre) is joined by others as they add a flower to a candidate’s name after winning their first seat. – AFPPIC

living, Ishiba has pledged cash handouts of ¥20,000 (RM595) for every citizen ahead of the upper house election. The opposition Democratic Party for the People (DPP) won seats for the first time in the Tokyo assembly vote, securing nine. The DPP’s campaign pledge for the July election includes sales tax cuts to boost household incomes. Sunday’s voter turnout rate was 47.6%, compared to the 42.4% four years ago, according to local media. A record 295 candidates ran – the highest since 1997, including 99 women candidates, also a record high. The number of women assembly members rose to 45 from 41, results showed. – AFP presidential election to Milei. “This puts her right in the centre of the political stage,”Juan Grabois, a prominent leftist social leader and a close ally of Kirchner, told Reuters. At least in the short term, experts said the corruption sentence linked to highway contracts would help Kirchner, though longer term it remains to be seen if she can effectively wield influence without being able to attend rallies and events in person. Last Wednesday, Kirchner was in her home serving house arrest while in the central Plaza de Mayo, her voice boomed from huge loudspeakers before crowds that had marched in downtown Buenos Aires. “We will return, and what’s more we will return with more wisdom, more unity, more strength,” she told supporters in a pre-recorded message. “From wherever I am, from whatever trench, I will do everything I can to be there with you.” Listening in the Plaza was Andrea Albarracin, 35, a member of Kirchner’s Peronist Justicialista Party. “I don’t hear a Cristina who has been defeated,” she said. Maria Teresa Garcia, secretary general of the party, told Reuters that Kirchner would continue to lead because “there isn’t another person who can raise her voice like Cristina.” – Reuters

house in October, its worst general election result in 15 years. Polls this month showed a slight uptick in support, however, thanks in part to policies to tackle high rice prices. Several factors lie behind recent shortages of rice at Japanese shops, including an intensely hot and dry summer two years ago that damaged harvests nationwide, and panic buying after a “mega-quake” warning last year. Over this time some traders have been hoarding rice in a bid to boost their profits down the line, experts say. Not including volatile fresh food, goods and energy in Japan were 3.7% higher in May than a year earlier. To help households combat the cost of

Argentina’s ex-president Kirchner under house arrest BUENOS AIRES: On a Buenos Aires residential street, two protesters painted a telling image in colourful strokes: a portrait of a lone woman on her balcony overlooking a mass of people below.

Kirchner waves from the balcony of her home in Buenos Aires. – REUTERSPIC Buenos Aires in recent days, and injected much needed energy into her movement, which had been battling internal divisions and disillusionment, especially since losing the 2023