JAPAN'S MAIN OPPOSITION TO PICK NEW LEADER AFTER CRUSHING ELECTION DEFEAT

TOKYO, Feb 13 (Bernama-Kyodo) -- Japan's main opposition force, the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA), will elect its new leader on Friday, embarking on a revamp of the newly created party that suffered a heavy loss in the House of Representatives election, Kyodo News reported.

The party's 49 lower house lawmakers will choose in a simple majority vote between two candidates -- Takeshi Shina, 59, former acting chief policymaker of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and Junya Ogawa, 54, a former CDPJ secretary general.

The short, two-day election comes ahead of a special parliamentary session next week to elect the country's prime minister following a landslide victory for the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

The CRA lost more than half of the 167 seats it had before Sunday's lower house contest, prompting its co-leaders Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito, the former heads of the CDPJ and the Komeito party, respectively, to resign to take responsibility.

The new leader's term will run until the end of March next year.

The CRA was formed in January by lower house members from the CDPJ and Komeito just weeks ahead of the snap general election, in which Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party won an over two-thirds majority in the powerful 465-member chamber.

While 28 of the newly elected CRA members come from the Komeito side, none joined the leadership race. Backed by Japan's biggest lay Buddhist organisation, Soka Gakkai, Komeito ended its 26-year alliance with the LDP in October.

The new leader will face the challenge of easing internal frictions caused by the perceived preferential treatment of candidates from Komeito in the selection process, which left the CDPJ side with just 21 seats after losing over 100 seats.

Komeito succeeded in electing all the candidates it fielded, as it was given priority in the CRA's proportional representation list in return for withdrawing from the 289 single-member constituencies, including one that had been occupied by Saito.

The CRA's poor showing at the election has made it the smallest main opposition party in postwar Japanese history, lacking the minimum requirement to submit budget-related bills or a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet on its own.

Lawmakers of the CDPJ and Komeito in the other chamber, the House of Councillors, have not come together under the CRA umbrella.

-- BERNAMA-KYODO