With the governing Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election a month away, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has emerged as the overwhelming favorite to win the post, and hence to become the next prime minister.
Among the LDP's nine factions, major ones have jumped on the Abe bandwagon. Other contenders for the party presidency -- Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki and Foreign Minister Taro Aso -- come from minor factions.
For decades, the LDP's interfactional power struggles for the presidency and the premiership have been a source of the party's strength, but that was before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's strategy of "crushing" factional influence. One after another, most LDP factions have moved to support the largest faction, headed by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, which backs Abe. As a result, policy debate ahead of the election has been marginalized.