26 Asia The EconomistAugust 29th 2020
2 bers along with it: gdpshrank by a record
7.8% in the second quarter of this year com-
pared with the first. Approval of Mr Abe’s
government sits at 34%, the lowest since
the start of his long second term. He might
prefer to try to regain popularity in order to
leave his successor on solid electoral foot-
ing—and to have bigger say in choosing
that successor, his adviser notes.
Kishida Fumio, the ldp’s head of policy,
is believed to be Mr Abe’s favourite. Voters
see him as competent, moderate and thor-
oughly uninspiring. Ishiba Shigeru, a for-
mer defence and agriculture minister,
staked out a rare position as an Abe critic.
He has broad support among the party’s
rank and file, but few backers among its
mps. (Mr Abe may resign early to avoid a
party-wide vote and thus block Mr Ishiba’s
rise, argues Toshikawa Takao, editor of To-
kyo Insideline, a political newsletter.) Mr
Suga is a master at managing the bureau-
cracy, but has little foreign-policy experi-
ence. Kono Taro, the current defence min-
ister, and Motegi Toshimitsu, the foreign
minister, both have aspirations for higher
office, though their candidacies are seen as
long shots.
The differences among them all are
more of tone and tactics than of ideology.
Finding differences on policy requires a
microscope. Mr Kishida would carry Mr
Abe’s flag, though he hails from a more cen-
trist wing of the ldp, less wedded to Mr
Abe’s priorities, such as revising the consti-
tution. Mr Ishiba may favour more ortho-
dox fiscal and monetary policy, but his
room for manoeuvre would be limited after
the pandemic. Mr Suga might devolve
more power to local governments. Mr Kono
casts himself as a maverick, having taken
stances at odds with the party in opposi-
tion to nuclear energy and in favour of al-
lowing the sons of female royals—or even
(gasp!) the female royals themselves—to
inherit the throne. Ultimately, the decision
will come down to personalities and fac-
tional arithmetic. “The selection process is
not really a policy choice,” says Sone Yasu-
nori of Keio University.
Whoever replaces Mr Abe will inherit
immense problems: gargantuan public
debt, a shrinking population and an econ-
omy that has been limping along for de-
cades. But he will also wield great author-
ity. During his long reign, Mr Abe has
centralised decision-making, establishing
a national security council and shifting
power away from the bureaucracy. “To
navigate a turbulent world, you need a
strong prime minister—that pattern is em-
bedded,” says Tobias Harris of Teneo, a con-
sultancy. “The institutional power will be
there for a prime minister who manages to
keep the ldpin his grip.” For now, however,
the question is whether Mr Abe himself,
not his as-yet-unknown successor, can
maintain his grip on the party. 7T
he whitesupremacist who murdered
51 Muslims in Christchurch in March
last year expressed only one regret: that he
had not been able to kill more. The mass
shooting, which he live-streamed on Face-
book, was the worst in New Zealand’s his-
tory. Its courts had never sentenced anyone
to life in prison without parole. But on Au-
gust 27th a judge ruled that Brenton Tarrant
should spend the rest of his life in jail.
“Anything less would have been a disap-
pointment” to most New Zealanders, says
Paul Spoonley of Massey University. The at-
tack forced the country to re-examine its
reputation as an open and harmonious
place. “Ever since,” he says, “we’ve been
looking for a degree of resolution.”
Survivors were spared a drawn-out trial
because Mr Tarrant, an Australian, pleaded
guilty to all 51 counts of murder, 40 of at-
tempted murder and one of terrorism. Still,
Kiwis worried that he might make a specta-
cle of the four-day hearing on his sentence.
The killer had sacked his lawyers and was
representing himself. He had already in-
spired copycats in other countries. How
could he be prevented from using his trial
as a grandstand?
The High Court’s answer was to bar live
reporting from the hearing. As it happened,
Mr Tarrant was silent. The stand was given
mostly to survivors of the attacks and rela-
tives of the victims. Some 90 of them read
statements about how his crimes had af-fected them. Several showed extraordinary
grace. Janna Ezat described receiving her
son’s body, with the skull smashed open
and brain still bleeding, before explaining
that her Muslim faith gave her “only one
choice: to forgive you”.
Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, as-
serts that New Zealand has “fundamentally
changed” since the massacre. She banned
semi-automatic weapons in the days that
followed the attack. By Christmas, the gov-
ernment had bought back more than
56,000 firearms and 200,000 illegal gun
parts in an amnesty. It is not clear how
many Kiwis have kept guns, though, be-
cause the law has only just been amended
to create a register.
Families are still waiting for other
promised changes. Plans to broaden hate-
speech laws to include religion have been
resisted on free-speech grounds by New
Zealand First, the coalition partner of Ms
Ardern’s Labour Party. A royal commission
is investigating whether the authorities
could have prevented the attacks. In a sub-
mission to the inquiry, the Islamic Wom-
en’s Council of New Zealand noted that the
security services had been warned about
the growing threat of Islamophobia. If
those complaints had been taken seriously,
it asserted, Mr Tarrant might not “have got
to the door of the mosques”.
Still, Muslims seem inclined to agree
with the prime minister. “New Zealand be-
fore 15th March is not New Zealand after
15th March,” says Gamal Fouda, an imam of
one of the mosques that was attacked. The
mindset of both its police and people “are
completely different”, he believes. Aliya
Danzeisen of the Islamic Women’s Council
notices “a change in how people interact
with you”. New Zealanders, she says, are
even more warm, friendly, tolerant and in-
clusive than before. 7SYDNEY
The man who attacked two mosques in
New Zealand last year is sentencedThe Christchurch massacreDignity in the face
of depravity
A platform for the victims, not the killer