Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the results of Japan’s snap parliamentary elections, Hong Kong’s sentencing of pro-democracy activist Jimmy Laiand anti-Israel protests across Australia.
Big Risk, Bigger Reward
Just 110 days after becoming Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi took a massive risk: holding snap parliamentary elections in the hopes of boosting the standing of her minority Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Her gamble worked. On Sunday, the LDP won a rare supermajoritysecuring 316 seats (up from 198) in the parliament’s 465-member lower house.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the results of Japan’s snap parliamentary elections, Hong Kong’s sentencing of pro-democracy activist Jimmy Laiand anti-Israel protests across Australia.
Big Risk, Bigger Reward
Just 110 days after becoming Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi took a massive risk: holding snap parliamentary elections in the hopes of boosting the standing of her minority Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Her gamble worked. On Sunday, the LDP won a rare supermajoritysecuring 316 seats (up from 198) in the parliament’s 465-member lower house.
This was the biggest landslide election victory in the country’s post-World War II history, and it reinvigorates faith in the conservative LDP, whose once-dominant position in parliament was upended by a series of devastating electoral defeats in recent years.
“With the rise of new more telegenic parties with a right-wing bent, there was talk that the reign of the LDP, which has ruled the country for all but six of the last 70 years, might finally be over,” Tokyo-based journalist William Sposato writes in Foreign Policy. But “[t]his result gives Takaichi a rare chance to turn things into a one-woman show.”
That “show” begins with the economy. Japan carries the heaviest debt burden among high-income countries, at more than 200 percent of the country’s GDP. A weak currency and investor concerns have further driven up costs of living and inflation rates. However, Sunday’s election victory now gives Takaichi a strong mandate to revitalize the economy on her terms—without needing to negotiate with other parties or seek buy-in from parliament’s opposition-controlled upper house. (The LDP’s two-thirds supermajority in the lower house gives it the ability to override vetoes by the upper house.)
“We must pull Japan out of excessively tight fiscal policy and a lack of investment,” Takaichi said on Monday. Following the election, the prime minister repeated her pledge to suspend a sales tax on food for at least two years to help ease household living costs, though she ruled out issuing fresh debt to achieve this.
Global markets appear optimistic. Tokyo stocks surged on Monday in anticipation of consumer stimulus. The Nikkei 225 jumped 5 percent in early trading, and bonds and the yen appeared stable after months of sliding.
But economic stimulus is only one part of Takaichi’s ambitious agenda. The prime minister also plans to use her party’s newfound supermajority to enact sweeping reforms to the country’s defense sector. Takaichi made waves in November when she characterized a potential future Chinese attack on Taiwan as a “survival-threatening situation” that could permit Japan to take military action. Although Beijing has responded with several retaliatory measures, Takaichi has not eased off her threats and instead has pushed to increase military spending and bolster state-led investments in semiconductor manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
“This year marks 10 years since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Takaichi said on Monday, referring to her mentor and former LDP leader, who was assassinated in 2022. “I aim to deepen this vision,” she added. She has floated enacting an anti-espionage law and amending the country’s pacifist constitution to unfetter its military.
Across the Pacific, U.S. President Donald Trump has applauded Takaichi’s win. The two leaders are set to have a meeting at the White House in March, during which Takaichi is expected to seek U.S. support for her conservative policies.
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The World This Week
Tuesday, Feb. 10: Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico hosts Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis.
Wednesday, Feb. 11: Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Barbados holds a general election.
African Union foreign ministers begin two days of meetings in Ethiopia.
European Union defense ministers convene in Brussels.
Thursday, Feb. 12: Bangladesh holds a general election.
EU leaders gather in Belgium for an informal retreat.
NATO defense ministers convene in Brussels.
Friday, Feb. 13: The three-day Munich Security Conference kicks off in Germany.
Saturday, Feb. 14: The African Union holds a two-day leaders’ summit in Ethiopia.
What We’re Following
20-year sentence. A Hong Kong court sentenced Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison on Monday. Six former senior newspaper staffers, an activist, and a paralegal were also sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 10 years. The ruling ends the city’s biggest national security case since a strict security law was first enacted in June 2020, and it delivers a crushing blow to pro-democracy activists, who championed Lai’s criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
Lai was arrested in August 2020 after being accused of openly supporting anti-government protests in 2019, and he was found guilty last year on two counts of colluding with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials. However, the 78-year-old has consistently denied all charges, arguing that he is a “political prisoner” facing persecution from Beijing.
“Twenty years, it’s a farce,” Lai’s son Sebastien said on Monday. “It’s essentially tantamount to a life sentence, or as Human Rights Watch calls it, a death sentence, because in the conditions that my father is being kept in, I don’t know if he even has a tenth of that.”
Backlash to Herzog’s visit. Thousands of protesters demonstrated across Australia on Monday over the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who kicked off a four-day, multicity tour to express solidarity with Australia’s Jewish population.
Herzog’s visit is in response to a deadly mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December, during which two gunmen opened fire on a group of worshippers celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. The attack—which killed 15 people, plus one of the attackers, and injured more than 40 others—was Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in decades and ignited fierce criticism that Canberra was not doing enough to combat rising antisemitism.
However, protesters on Monday denounced Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to invite Herzog, whose country has been accused of genocide and war crimes in Gaza. Police clashed with demonstrators outside Sydney Town Hall, and local authorities used pepper spray to disperse crowds and make arrests. Australian officials have also been granted permission to move crowds, restrict entry to certain areas, and search vehicles as needed, among other rarely invoked measures.
Weekend election results. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul consolidated power on Sunday, with his Bhumjaithai Party winning around 192 seats in the 500-member lower house. Anutin had only been in power for three months when he called in December for snap elections after being threatened with a no-confidence vote. The conservative leader used deadly clashes with Cambodia to reestablish himself as a wartime leader, earning him favor after floods and financial scandals damaged his reputation.
Although the Bhumjaithai Party did not secure the 251 seats needed to elect a new prime minister, experts expect the populist Pheu Thai party (with its roughly 74 seats) to back Anutin’s ambitions and join Bhumjaithai in a coalition government. Polling initially predicted Thailand’s People’s Party to win the most seats. However, the progressive group had a poorer showing than expected, only clinching about 117 seats.
Meanwhile, Portugal elected center-left Socialist Party candidate António José Seguro to be the country’s next president in a runoff vote on Sunday. Winning more than 66 percent of the vote, Seguro swept far-right challenger André Ventura, quelling fears that Europe’s hard-right shift would dominate in Lisbon. Still, analysts argue that Portugal is not immune to surging right-wing nationalism across the continent.
Odds and Ends
Even nonfootball fans tuned in on Sunday to watch the Super Bowl halftime showfeaturing global pop star Bad Bunny. The Puerto Rican artist used one of the world’s biggest stages to celebrate Latinx culture, shed light on centuries of colonization, and pay homage to the territory’s rich history. Many championed Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language, roughly 13-minute performance as an act of resistance to the United States’ sweeping immigration crackdown and interventionist agenda in Latin America. However, Trump (unsurprisingly) took a different tonecalling the show “an affront to the Greatness of America”—despite Puerto Rico being a U.S. territory.
