The newly-elected president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic (LDP) Party Shinzo Abe expectably won the vote in an extra Diet session and was elected the country's new prime minister Tuesday.

His earlier victory in the lower house, which holds the final say in picking a premier, was corresponded in the upper house given the majorities enjoyed by the ruling bloc, made up of the LDP and its coalition partner New Komeito party, in both houses.

The matter of procedures is that even if the vote result in the House of Representatives was opposed by the House of Councilors, the former has the right to maintain its decision and Abe's victory will be unchanged.

Abe, who sealed a landslide victory in the LDP presidential race on Sept. 20 and was set to succeed Junichiro Koizumi to become new premier, will announce the lineup of his Cabinet later in the afternoon.

The 52-year-old Abe who is grandson of a former prime minister and son of a former foreign minister has become Japan's youngest postwar prime minister and the first premier born after World War II.

After an attestation ceremony at the Imperial Palace, Abe will give his first news conference as premier in the evening.

He has indicated that in choosing the Cabinet ministers, he will break traditions of faction balance and appoint members who support his policies and are suitable for their respective posts, according to Kyodo News.

Sources indicated that current Senior Vice Foreign Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki is likely to be nominated chief Cabinet secretary, the post of top government spokesman which will be concurrently given by Abe assignment related to abductions of Japanese nationals by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Former Foreign Minister Taro Aso will resume his post or be given another key Cabinet post, sources close to Abe said.

Japanese former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who stepped onto the post in 2001 and has become Japan's longest-serving leader in three decades, resigned with all of his Cabinet ministers earlier in the day.

In his tenure of more than 5 years, while unilaterally concentrated on the promotion of alliance with the United States, Koizumi insisted on paying visits to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, engendering a deterioration of relations with China and South Korea and dragging Japan into an embarrassed diplomatic isolation in Asia.

Source: Xinhua