Japan’s lower House of parliament has formally elected Shinzo Abe, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, as country’s prime minister after he swept to power on a hawkish platform of getting tough on diplomacy while fixing the economy. The powerful lower House named the 58-year-old as the country’s next leader on Wednesday after he led his conservative party to a landslide victory in the general elections earlier this month. Abe, who previously served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007, is expected to form a new cabinet later in the day as he rushes to draft an extra budget to spur the nation’s flagging economy. As Japan’s seventh prime minister in less than seven years, Abe will replace outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda whose Democratic Party of Japan suffered a stinging defeat at the polls. The party, which came to power in 2009, was seen as being punished for policy flip-flops and its clumsy handling of last year’s nuclear disaster at Fukushima in the wake of the tsunami. The LDP and its small ally, the New Komeito party, won a two-thirds majority in the 480-seat lower house in the December 16 election. As expected, Noda’s cabinet resigned on Wednesday morning.
