LDP election exposes huge gap between Diet members, frustrated rank and file

Former economic policy minister Akira Amari, a long-time aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, looked grim and sour facing reporters on Thursday at the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's head office in Tokyo just after Abe's re-election to a third term as party president.

Amari, who served as director-general of Abe's campaign team for Thursday's election, had been asked to comment on the results.

Abe comfortably beat former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba by a vote of 553 to 254, garnering 82 percent of the 402 valid ballots cast by the LDP's lawmakers in the Diet, who cast half of the 810 votes in the election. But the other 405 ballots cast by the LDP's 643,681 rank-and-file members nationwide painted a starkly different picture.