Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has suggested that the dissolution of the House of Representatives and a general election may be held before his term as leader of the ruling party ends in September 2024.
Speaking on a TV program aired Sunday, Kishida expressed support for the view that he should begin his second term only after gaining public confidence in the lower house election for his policies, including implementing tax hikes to fund higher defense spending.
"The question is what exactly we are going to do in order to achieve that," said Kishida, who won the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election in 2021 for a three-year term.
In an interview with Kyodo News and other media outlets last month, Kishida said that a lower house election is "possible" before the government carries out planned tax hikes to cover the envisioned expansion of Japan's defense spending in 2024 or later.
Koichi Hagiuda, the policy chief of Kishida's LDP, has backed plans to hold a general election before implementing the tax hikes.
The premier has the final say on the dissolution of Japan's House of Representatives under the Constitution. The current four-year terms for lower house members expire in October 2025 unless Kishida dissolves the chamber.
"Not only defense, but the declining birthrate, energy, and wage increases are all issues that affect the lives of the people and cannot be postponed," Kishida stressed on the program recorded last Thursday. He added that the timing of the dissolution would have to take into consideration "the appropriate time to tackle such issues and the judgement of the public."
Facing ever-growing security challenges, Kishida has pledged to boost Japan's defense spending to around 43 trillion yen ($332 billion) in total over the next five years starting in 2023, bringing annual spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product.
With an ordinary Diet session set to convene Monday, Kishida said he decided to move forward with the plan "based on the notion that it is our generation's responsibility to future generations to deal with the situation," and that he would carefully explain the issue to the public through debate with opposition parties.
