Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga will effectively become the first Liberal Democratic Party president without factional affiliations, if elected.
Top LDP lawmakers generally aspire to the party presidency based on the faction to which they belong. Although Junichiro Koizumi won the 2001 party presidential election without belonging to any faction, he had been a member of the Mori faction (currently the Hosoda faction) until just before the election.
After Suga was first elected in 1996, he belonged to the then Obuchi, now Takeshita, faction. He left the faction with former party Secretary General Seiroku Kajiyama, who had been his mentor, when Kajiyama ran for party president in 1998.
In 2000, Suga joined the Kato faction, which is now the Kishida faction. However, he left before the 2009 party presidential election to support Taro Kono, the current defense minister from the Aso faction.
Since then, Suga has made clear his separation from factional politics. When he led the LDP to regain power in the 2012 election of the House of Representatives as the acting party secretary general, he indicated he was distancing himself from factions.
Regarding the appointment of officials, Suga said, "If the factions start maneuvering, confidence in the party will disappear in a flash. Factional nominations will 100 percent not happen."
Now Suga has been dubbed the "star of the factionless," according to his aides. He has strong influence over some 30 lawmakers in the party without faction affiliations. A senior member of the Kishida faction even cynically described Suga's influence as "practically the eighth faction" in the LDP, which currently has seven.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Suga commented on the fact that five factions, including the largest Hosoda faction, had came together to support him. "I am not here now because I was nominated by a coalition of factions. I decided myself to run for the office, and the energy of people unaffiliated with factions is pushing me forward," he said.
However, many of the factionless lawmakers who support Suga are young or midranking, with weak electoral bases. There is a view within the party that Suga is a "strategist type," and the lack of a strong No. 2 to support him will be a challenge in managing his administration.
Speaking at a news conference regarding the appointment of a chief cabinet secretary if he becomes the next prime minister, Suga said, "There are many outstanding lawmakers in LDP. I want to choose from this wide range of talented people."
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