Deal puts Takaichi on track to be Japan's 1st woman PM

TOKYO — Japan's ruling party is set to sign a new coalition deal on Monday, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the country's first woman prime minister, media reports said.

Takaichi became leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier this month, but the collapse of her ruling coalition derailed her bid to become prime minister.

Since then, the LDP has been working to cobble together a different alliance, putting her chances back on track.

Takaichi and her counterpart Hirofumi Yoshimura from the right-leaning opposition Japan Innovation Party, or JIP, were set to sign a coalition agreement on Monday, Kyodo News reported on Sunday, citing unnamed senior officials from both parties.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper also said Takaichi and Yoshimura were "likely to sign a coalition agreement after talks on Monday", citing unnamed party sources.

The reports come after the LDP's junior partner, the Komeito party, left the ruling coalition after 26 years, plunging Japan into a political crisis.

The fragmented opposition appears to have failed to agree on a common joint candidate for prime minister.

An alliance between the LDP and the JIP could lead to Takaichi's election as prime minister on Tuesday, but they are still two seats shy of a majority in the powerful lower house of the two-chamber parliament.

Should the vote go to a second-round runoff, however, Takaichi would only need support from more lawmakers than the other candidate.

Senior officials from the two parties agreed on Friday in Tokyo that the LDP would strive to realize the JIP's proposals to lower the consumption tax rate on food to zero from the current level of up to 10 percent, and to abolish corporate and organizational donations, Kyodo News reported.

The LDP also accepted Yoshimura's demand to cut the number of parliament seats, which he has called a "non-negotiable condition" for entering the coalition, it said.

Agencies via Xinhua