Not only are business people going to invest in Microsoft’s cloud, they are going to do it despite thinking that they will end up spending more with Microsoft over time. Fifty-seven percent of CIOs who were using or planned to use services like Azure and Office 365 said they thought they would spend MORE with Microsoft in a recent poll. Only 16 percent thought they’d end up paying less to Microsoft.
Using cloud services is widely considered to be a way for businesses to cut down on other costs — for example, hardware and IT staff — although results are far from uniform.
This is in part due to the ongoing nature of cloud service provision– the lifetime customer value in a budding industry projected to be worth $150 billion when it ripens. According to Morgan Stanley’s Keith Weiss, current evidence supports Microsoft’s calculations of a 1.2-1.8X increase in customer value — a future that sounds more sunny than cloudy.
Who knows best what content users of social media want to see? According to Facebook in statements accompanying the roll out of their latest news feed update, users themselves.
“We know that ultimately you’re the only one who truly knows what is most meaningful to you and that is why we want to give you more ways to control what you see,” said Facebook’s product manager Jacob Frantz.
“Today we are announcing even better tools for you to actively shape and improve the experience. We’ve redesigned and expanded Facebook’s News Preferences to give you more control.”
With the new algorithm, Facebook users will choose their own top 30 friends or pages. This will leave all the others further below when users check their newsfeeds.
For businesses, this could be boon or misfortune, according to social media expert Dionne Lew, whose remarks were reported by SmartCompany. “I think this is a really good change to the algorithm,” said Lew.
“People have been unhappy about the decline in reach as a result of the changes with the last news feed update and there’s been general unhappiness — from people using it personally, but also businesses who have seen a significant decline in organic reach.”
The companies that have the best relationships with their customers will have the best chances of rising to the top in the new newsfeed, Lew predicted.
“It’s going to work really well for those brands who’ve put the effort into building relationships.”
In order to get prioritized, though, businesses on Facebook may need to ask for it.
“For some brands it might be appropriate to ask directly for some people to prioritize them,” said Lew.
“But it’s a bigger ask. When it was a click of a button [to like a page] it was just click and off you go. But what you’re saying here is we know you have limited space and you’re actually going to have to find that option in your settings. It’s not something that’s as easy as clicking a button – it needs to be a more thoughtful ask and you need to give them a bit of a reason and a call to action.”
Of 541 European businesses polled on their intentions to expand in China this year, only 26 percent said they were “optimistic” about their companies being profitable in China, and only 56 percent said they had plans to expand in the Asian nation. The number marks a significant drop from the previous year, when 86 percent of European companies polled had intentions to expand in China.
The main reason for the diminishing investment in China is the “protracted Chinese economic slowdown,” according to the European Union Chamber of Commerce in their 2015 Business Confidence Survey, released this week.
Pessimism about prospects in China have also caused significant business cutbacks in the area, particularly in the area of jobs. Thirty-nine percent of European Chamber member companies polled said they planned lay-offs this year, compared with 24 percent the year before. This was particularly the case in the energy industry.
Planned cutbacks in China (the EUCC report)
Behind the pessimism about China, The European Chamber stated, was the lack of regulatory framework in the nation. In particular, the lack of effective rule of law was seen as a serious obstacle to China’s moving forward.
“The Chinese economy is facing a paradigm shift, making it necessary for the Chinese Government to discard its ‘old toolbox’ of high, fixed-asset investments and export-driven growth, which created unprecedented overcapacity levels and debt burden in many sectors,” noted the report.
Despite the diminishing hope in Chinese business, the nation in 2015 is still a top investment area relative to the rest of the world.
“China’s economy still has room for growth, and so more than half of European companies remain optimistic about their growth prospects, though this number has dropped 10 points year-on-year. Furthermore, nearly a quarter are pessimistic about their profitability outlook,” stated the European Chamber survey.
American trend forecaster Gerald Celente’s quip that “As U.S. wages war, China wages business” is more reality than wit. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Xi Jinping visited Pakistan in preparation of a $46 billion investment in infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, the Obama administration remains mired in the backlash following the deaths of two Western hostages in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan back in January.
The Chinese-financed infrastructure projects further solidify Chinese relations with Pakistan, one of the prospective founding members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The AIIB, a five-month-old initiative by the Chinese government to challenge the economic hegemony held by the U.S.-led International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
The AIIB emerged in response to the U.S.’s refusal to reform the Bretton Woods system and amplify China’s voting influence in the IMF. China, with a GDP of $10 trillion, holds less of a stake in the Fund than countries with significantly smaller economies such as France. In response to U.S. arrogance, Beijing decided to take matters into its own hands in the formation of the AIIB. Judging by the international community’s rush to get in on the action, the new China-led bank seems to be off to a good start.
Some of the prospective founding members of the AIIB include some of the U.S.’s staunchest allies, including the British, French, Italians and Germans. Even Australia, Taiwan and the Israelis applied to join the AIIB. The international community has effectively isolated the U.S.; many justifying their actions by claiming that they’d rather be onboard with the Chinese than not have a say at all.
The trend is a major setback for the Obama administration, which failed to persuade its own allies to forgo the Chinese-led initiative. The U.S. also claims that the AIIB cannot be expected to maintain the same ethical and environment protocols characteristic of the IMF and World Banks.
The AIIB’s emergence in the global economic arena symbolizes an enormous shift in power. The Bank threatens U.S. financial credibility and hegemony in the eyes of the international community, and the more influence the AIIB accumulates the more isolated the United States will become from the rest of the world. As the infrastructure at home rots at its foundations, the U.S. dedicates 3.5% of its GDP to military expenditures.
So while the U.S. invests in war, supporting the Saudis in Yemen, and sending troops to the Ukraine under the auspices of Operation “Fearless Guardian”; the Chinese invest in infrastructure. As Washington desperately tries to salvage what is left of its waning political and economic global hegemony, the East seems to be gaining ground. As the sun sets in the West, it begins to rise in the East.
The clock is ticking on the Greek debt agreement, and the smell of impending default fills the air. The Financial Times reported on Monday that the Greek government is prepared to forego €2.5 billion worth of payments due to the IMF in the next couple months, effectively plunging the nation into default.
The southern European nation could potentially be the first domino to fall in the dissolution of the eurozone. The default would send a serious tremor through Europe’s short-lived economic union, and the ECB is poised to cut off the cheap money spigot, leaving the Greek financial sector high and dry fomenting greater economic tumult.
Today the Financial Times reports that German finance minister Wolfgang Shäuble shot down any inkling that there might be an accord between the leftist Syriza government and its creditors. Further, Standard & Poor, a rating agency, announced that as a result of the junk status of Greek bonds, Greece is probably not going to be able to pay anybody back, let alone the IMF.
The gloom and doom factor here is that Greece is nearly incapable of paying out pensions and salaries for public sector workers, and as a leftist government, the decision to sell out the people to pay off the IMF is risky. With that being said, and due to the fact that the Germans wash their hands of this whole nasty thing, all that is really left to do is wait for the smoke to clear.
The question still remains of whether or not the Greeks will stay in the eurozone or if the “Grexit” will ensue. Public opinion in Greece indicates that an immense amount of Greeks, or 82 percent support Greece remaining in the monetary union.
With the Germans turning their backs on the “radical” Syriza government, and the ECB preparing to cut off the cash, all that that the cradle of democracy can do is to accept the honor of being the first deadbeat nation in the developed world.
The ballad of the Greek bust is an unprecedented story for the 21st century, and anybody not paying attention to this thing is missing history. The aftermath of this Greek financial tragedy has the potential to rock and roil the very foundations of the global financial system, and no doubt a great transformation is on the horizon.
On Wednesday, March 18th, the Federal Reserve released an official statement and held a press conference regarding monetary policy and current economic conditions. In this statement, the Fed projected a decline in its inflation expectation, and revised projected GDP growth downward. These are both signs of a slowing economy, not the accelerating economy required to actually raise interest rates. Janet Yellen reiterated, as she has since October, that the decision to raise rates is entirely data dependent, and not at all based on a specific calendar date. When labor market conditions improve and inflation reaches the targeted 2%, the Fed at that time would consider raising rates. The FOMC’s projections estimate that labor market conditions will improve further to 4.9% unemployment and inflation will edge upward to two percent in the years 2016 and 2017. The inherent difficulty with accepting the future estimate on inflation is the fact that the projection of inflation is an outlier to the trend being established by the incoming data. Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation, including food and energy, has been declining since November. The Fed also cut its estimate of PCE inflation from December, for the year 2015. The PCE measure has been falling since October when it was at 1.48%, and current sits at 1.31%. This is a decline of 11% since the Fed finished its bond buying program. The last time PCE was 2% was in March of 2012. If the Fed expects inflation in 2015 to be low, borderline dangerously low by the ideas of some FOMC Board members, then how can the Fed raise rates this year? Especially if raising rates has the effect of lowering inflation even more, then the United States might enter outright deflation. The Federal Reserve has been trying to prevent deflation ever since the financial crisis.
When the Fed put out its statement, it no longer included the word “patient” in regards to when it will raise interest rates. In previous press conferences, Chair Yellen has said that when the Committee elects to remove “patient”, the Fed may begin to raise rates “in a couple of meetings.” During her most recent conference she said that there is no calendar date and markets should not expect a rate hike in necessarily two meetings. Effective the word “patient” was removed, but its meaning in terms of the Fed’s Policy was not. In the Question and Answer portion of the Conference Sam Fleming from the Financial Times asked a question regarding the risks of leaving “zero lower bound” and how tightening too early can have greater risks than remaining in a low interest rate environment. Chari Yellen responded by saying, “When an economy is operating at the so called zero lower bound, it creates a situation where there are asymmetric risks.” She continues, “If there are adverse shocks to demand that tend to push inflation and economic performance in an adverse direction, it’s not possible to lower rates. Of course that’s a reason why for a number of years we engaged in active asset purchase programs.” Yellen pointed out that while at close to zero percent interest rates the Fed’s policy options to further stimulate the economy are limited.
With the dramatic drop in the price of oil, along with thousands of rig layoffs have pulled the energy industry into a large contraction. Combine this with largely negative economic data, paired with the fact that the US is historically due for a recession, and there could be a large problem for the Fed. The Bloomberg ECO Surprise Index, which measures general economic data trends, is at its lowest level since the depths of the recession in 2009. The US economy could very well be starting to roll over into a recession, in which the Federal Reserve’s policy options are limited. According to Janet Yellen’s remarks about past policy decisions in this type of scenario, one would think that if this negative trend continues the possibility of another asset purchasing program could enter into the discussion, postponing today’s talks about raising interest rates even further.
Foreign investment is a hot topic at the moment. The idea mostly, in the current climate, invokes criticism and anger, such as the recent Guardian opinion piece that lamented the selling off of British and London infrastructure to foreign investors. To compound this, there has been general ill feeling from some quarters due to a view that European, and particularly British, condemnation of the conflict in the Ukraine and Russian aggression has been diluted by the noueau-riche Russians investing and blowing their money across London and other trendy cities.
Nevertheless, foreign investment is capable of garnering some positive headlines with the case of Sri Lanka. Understandably, Sri Lanka does not immediately jump to mind when you are trying to think of where best to spend your money. While it is difficult to compare the post-civil war situation across different countries, it is generally true that institutions weakened by war usually do not have the capacity to handle investments. The economy of Northern Ireland, after a significant period of general peace and stability, is weak. This is partly due to much of the political focus being on identity and violence rather than the economy. So why is Sri Lanka different?
One easy example is that of tourism. A long civil war deterred tourists from flocking to the region and so its rich natural beauty and its breath-taking array of flora and fauna was never truly tapped into. This is now changing. It is also on the door step of India so Sri Lanka can be an attractive pit stop for westerners touring the region. This has a follow on for infrastructure and, as well, Sri Lanka has a view on the long-term as it tries, backed by Chinese money, to become a maritime hub in the region.
Sri Lanka’s proximity to India is another boon because India is enjoying the fruits of heavy foreign investment itself and India has a good trade policy with Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka and India are both under stable governments and, thus, there is time and energy to direct towards improving their respective economies without the disraction of a destabilizing civil war in the region.
In addition to the analysis from Forbes, CNBC called Sri Lanka the ‘darling’ of investors as the economy continues to grow and inflation continues to decrease. The economy grew by 8 percent last year.
To temper this positivity, it is important to note that Transparency International has stated that funds earmarked for reconstruction and investment have been misappropriated and the systemic corruption in Sri Lanka is a stumbling block for future investment. It is a common problem in post conflict zones and one Sri Lanka is not immune from. Transparency International used Bosnia-Herzegovina as an example of inherent corruption making investors more wary and reluctant. This is the fate that awaits Sri Lanka, Transparency International fears.
HSBC are another group who are not entirely convinced by Sri Lanka’s economy, citing an over dependence on foreign fuel and a lack of consumer spending as reasons for remaining doubtful.
Overall, Sri Lanka is a place remarkable for its readiness for investment and for the stability of its government. There are obvious problems which persist but, with elections on the way, Sri Lanka can epitomize how foreign investment can be a good and positive thing at a time when this concept of is receiving a lot of bad press around the world.
Prices keep getting steeper, and people’s tempers are rising almost at the same rate. That is the best manner in which the current situation of the Vancouver housing market, which has stirred debate in the last few years, can be described.
Yet, there is an underlying issue which most are not willing to discuss. Every time we hear of individuals complaining of the money which has been pouring in from Hong Kong over the last decade, we start to feel that in a way they are right, and perhaps something should be done about it, i.e. government intervention. However, to go down that path is to go against a right that Canadians enjoy with totality, one which has defined the freedoms that have given shape to this country: property rights. In this case the right to sell our property to whomever we wish.
Consider you want to sell your car for the best price possible. Your neighbor will give you $600 for your beater, yet the man two streets down is willing to buy it for $800. Who are you going to sell it to? You know very well that like any normal human being that you want to get the most you can for it. That in essence is the Vancouver housing market. If individuals or large real estate firms can get the best prices overseas, they will, and to deny that from them is a gross infringement of their rights, regardless of how it affects the housing market.
Although the situation is far more complicated than mere wealthy individuals from overseas buying these properties, we also have to consider the lack of livable space in Vancouver, as well as speculation on the part of a great deal of Vancouverites themselves. We do need to understand that the housing market needs to be let alone and to run its course. If the government steps in in any manner, it would constitute as a violation of the Constitution. More precisely, coercion — the kind that you see in despotic states.
A common problem that people voice is that having so much Vancouver real estate in foreign hands is not a good thing, especially when many of the lots and houses remain unoccupied. My question is: Why? They will answer that it destroys communities and relationships with people. Yes, something which is true, however you cannot expect property owners to sell their property for less to locals, just so you can say “Hi” to a neighbor over your fence once in a while. Individual property is a cornerstone of Western civilization and a reason why we live in prosperity.
However, there is another austere problem in the backstage of the whole situation: xenophobia. Many have resorted to a prime collective racism, believing that allowing Hong Kong money — in other words Asian investors — to come to Vancouver and take over real estate is somehow wrong. What these ignorant individuals forget, however, is that the irrelevance of where people come from is so minuscule that it is sincerely ridiculous. This is not about ethnicity, rather about money, which never discriminates in any situation. The money pouring into Vancouver might as well have been from Bulgaria, it does not matter. In fact no one cares, which is the beauty of the entire situation in the first place — what matters is profit.
PARIS — French newspaper “Le Monde” revealed last night after a large investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that between 2005 and 2007 more than €180 billion would have transited through a private bank in Switzerland, where world leaders, including kings and celebrities, hid their savings. According to the news organization, an HSBC subsidiary would have accepted and even encouraged customers of 200 foreign countries to place their savings there.
That’s a total of over 100,000 international clients who would have been tempted to evade the control of tax authorities by transiting funds through accounts in Geneva. “The World” has access to a list of the names of the bank’s prestigious clients, and shared it with more than 50 other international media bodies, thus mobilizing some 154 journalists.
The analysis of these accounts cover a period from November 2006 to March 2007. The billions were mostly hidden behind offshore structures in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.
Among the famous customers involved in this case of possible mass international fraud are personalities from various backgrounds such as Mohamed VI, the current king of Morocco, Elle McPherson, the famous Australian top model of the 90s, actress Joan Collins, and even Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher. No exception for France — the famous hairdresser Jacques Dessange had an account in HSBC’s Swiss industry, where there would have been up to €1, 6 million between 2006 and 2007, according to the famous “listings Falciani” — named after the employee of HSBC who had stolen his employer’s client lists and details.
Nina Ricci’s heiress also appears on the list: € 18.7 million would have transited through her Swiss account.
“We recognize and assume responsibility for past failures of compliance and control procedures,” the British bank responded in a press release.
According to HSBC, the Swiss subsidiary had not been fully integrated into the group after its acquisition in 1999, and therefore the compliance levels were subsequently “significantly lower” than the norm, and “this could have led to a number of customers who may not have fully complied with their tax obligations.” The bank adds that its Swiss subsidiary had in recent years undergone a “radical transformation” and that such tax evasion practices were outdated.
Gérard Davet, a French instigator and journalist for Le Monde, spoke to BMFTV this morning. “It’s been six years that we are working on this investigation with Fabrice Lhomme, a year that we are in possession of the data, and from the beginning we said that we are facing an absolutely amazing case because of its size, over 180 billion and more than 100,000 clients, in 10’s of thousands of offshore accounts. … We have revealed a big system and we are dealing with an absolutely awesome scanda. … In 2005 there has been a European tax that was put in place and the bank itself has offered its customers to set up offshore structures to hide their money in Panama or Virgin Islands UK. … There was a whole system of HSBC account managers who went canvassing customers in France in prestigious hotels and restaurants, trying to make them believe in very interesting but totally fraudulent investments. People need to understand that 98 percent of persons who used this system are fraudsters.
“All this is only a part of what we have discovered. We have identified the bank’s employees who had opened accounts with millions of dollars in them. Even assuming that these people are paid very well, it is inconceivable that it is not money that they keep their customers. … Dozens of investigations are still in progress.”
Yann Galut, French lawyer and politician, meanwhile said, “Seek reparation from Switzerland, who can’t get away with this.”
According to a report by anti-poverty charity organization Oxfam America, the wealthiest 1 percent of people will possess global assets in excess of assets possessed by the rest of earth’s 7.12 billion people by next year.
The percentage of global wealth owned by the richest 1 percent rose from 46 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014, and it will rise to over 50 percent by 2016, Oxfam reported.
“The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast,” said Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who is a co-chair of the upcoming World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which will be attended by a record 300 heads of state.
Oxfam also reported that 80 percent of the world’s population currently owns just 5.5 percent of global wealth. This equates to under $4,000 per person, while the average wealth of the top 1 percent is $2.7 million. Further down the line, 1 in 9 people cannot afford enough food for themselves, and over 1 billion people have less than $1.25 per day to live on.
The wealth of the richest people continues to rise, Oxfam reported. In 2014, the 80 richest people had the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people, representing a doubling of the wealth of the richest 80 since 2009.
“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined?” Byanyima asked.
“The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast.”
Oxfam’s report comes just ahead of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
As gas prices plummet and many O&G workers face unemployment in the upcoming year, a new report has charted the transition from oil and gas to green energy in Canada. Better prospects for jobs–sun, wind and water are more widely distributed across the nation than oil fields–and clean energy business opportunities exist in many areas that have so far not been exploited, according to Clean Energy Canada, which undertook the research. Communications Director James Glave explained some of the details about when and how the fast-approaching energy revolution will happen, as well as about the remaining questions–and challenges–of the new frontier.
“Canada-wide, working class citizens travel to oil and gas areas to work in industry. Looking at the two energy industries–oil and gas and clean energy–what is their future with regards to employment,” James Glave, communications director at Clean Energy Canada, told The Speaker.
James Glave
Glave commented specifically on the future of Canadian employment in the two markets–oil and gas and clean energy.
“Oil and gas jobs are inextricably tied to the physical locations of fossil-fuel deposits; resource sector families have long struggled with the separation of loved ones, who travel to and from work in often-remote camps,” said Glave.
“While renewable-energy project sites are similarly often also located in remote sites–as an example, I’d cite the Forest Kerr run-of-river project in remote northwestern British Columbia–clean-energy resources such as wind, sun, and water are distributed widely across the country. Opportunities exist for building and maintaining clean-energy generation from coast to coast to coast. Further, beyond putting iron in the ground, the opportunities to innovate clean energy products and services–for example, energy efficiency control software–exist anywhere, but to date have largely centred around clean tech ‘clusters’ in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax.”
Clean Energy Canada’s report, “Tracking the Energy Revolution: Canada,” found that people working for green energy companies already outnumber those who work in the so-called tar sands. In the last five years, $25 billion has been invested in the sector, and green energy work has risen 37 percent.
Capacity and sales are up as well. Solar, wind, river and biomass plant power is up 93 percent since 2009, and electric vehicle sales doubled one year (2012-2013), to list just two notable examples from the organizations findings.
However, there is no real choice between the two sectors. The future of energy is clean, and it is really a matter of when and how, according to Glave.
“The transformation of Canadian and global energy systems is inevitable,” he said. “As to when, the answer is some combination of what is possible and what is necessary.”
He spoke of Canadian energy potentials.
“On the what’s possible side, we turn to the work of Stanford University’s Mark Jacobsen. His team’s work demonstrates that on a global basis, it is possible to produce all new energy with wind, water, and solar by 2030, and possible to replace all existing energy with these sources by 2050. ‘Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic,’ he writes ‘The energy cost in a wind, water and sun world should be similar to that today.’ We don’t yet have the modelling in place to confirm what specifically this means for carbon-rich Canada, but we do know that we need a plan to manage this transition to minimize economic and employment disruption.”
“As for the necessary date, the United Nations Environment Programme recently pegged it at 2070. That is the year by which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that the world must cut net CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion to ZERO if humanity is to avoid ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.’ By the end of this century, ALL greenhouse gas emissions–including methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, as well as CO2–must fall to net zero or even go negative, the UN says.”
Glave provided some analysis on what Canadians should be aware of with regard to the funding of the clean energy revolution.
“Canada’s fossil fuel sector has generated and continues to generate tremendous wealth,” noted Glave. “Other oil-rich nations, particularly Norway, have done an excellent job of setting aside proceeds from oil revenues; Norway now has a near-trillion-dollar nest egg that will likely help that nation with this inevitable economic transition. Canada has not done this, though our polling suggests that strong public support exists for such an idea. It’s going to be tough to catch up and embrace a Norway-style at this late date, so the funding will likely be some combination of financing from the growing private-sector investment and targeted public support–the same kind that got the oil sands off the ground many years ago.”
For Japan’s Premier Shinzō Abe, Abenomics, a three point economic strategy to revive Japan, will be the first task he has to attend to after his landslide victory in the Lower House election was announced on Monday this week.
Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Kōmeitō Party, its junior ruling coalition member, swept the election by winning 326, a whopping two-thirds of the 475 seats, recording a low voter turnout nonetheless.
Despite winning the election by a landslide, only 52.66 percent of the population was recorded at the polling turnout. This is 6.66 points down from the previous election in 2012 which saw the LDP return to power ending rival Democratic Party of Japan’s first term in power. Political analysts noted that a lack of strong opposition parties, not support for Abe won him this election.
At the conference in the LDP headquarters in Tokyo, a triumphant Abe said, “We will keep prioritizing the economic agenda. We will spread (the benefits) of economic recovery to all across the country.” In order to boost Japan’s potential for growth in the future, Abenomics, the three “arrow” economic policy of more fiscal spending, structural reforms and aggressive monetary easing is what Abe promised to pursue as he announced his victory at the press conference on Monday afternoon.
The landslide victory for Abe, is an indication of the presence of few rivals internally that will challenge him at the LDP’s presidential election next year. For Abe, who has led the country as its prime minster since his second win in 2012, this win is an augury of his possible third term as the island nation’s returning leader.
The National Diet or Kokkai, Japan’s bicameral legislature is expected to hold a special session on Dec. 24 re-electing Abe for his third term, following which he will have to choose his new Cabinet. The public broadcasting network Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) reports that Abe intends to retain his Cabinet as is, although he made no comments on it, only deferring it to the future when pressed about the issue.
In his argument on Sunday, Abe believed that re-electing his coalition meant that voters endorsed his security policies for Japan, even though they are linked to a somewhat controversial reinterpretation of the pacifist Constitution. A long-held ambition, Abe is likely to call a national referendum on revising the Constitution, although it is in his best interest to tread softly on the issue. For his part, the premier pledged to enact the right of collective self-defence in the Diet session in January saying, “Of course voters gave support (to the planned security bills). We will carry out what we have promised.”
After an independent candidate joined the LDP late on Sunday, the total count came to 291 while the New Kōmeitō recorded 35 seats, and the others made up the rest. The next challenge for Shinzō Abe, will be the Upper House election in summer 2016, a move that will aid Abe in his quest to pursue amendments in the Constitution although, the charter has to be initiated by a two-thirds majority vote in both the Lower and Upper houses, before it is given the stamp of public approval in a national referendum.
