Taro Kono, Fumio Kishida enter runoff voting in Japan's ruling party presidential election

TOKYO, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Taro Kono and Fumio Kishida on Wednesday entered the runoff voting in the presidential election of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), as none of the four candidates secured a majority in the first round of voting.

In the first round, LDP parliamentarians cast 382 votes and another 382 votes were allotted to rank-and-file members of the party.

With higher votes in the first round, vaccination minister Kono and former foreign minister Kishida entered the runoff voting round, which will finally determine the winner.

In the runoff voting, the LDP lawmakers will cast the same number of votes, but the rank-and-file members' votes will be reduced to one for each of the LDP's 47 prefectural chapters, which indicates that the voting of LDP Diet members will significantly sway the result.

As the LDP-led coalition constitutes a majority in both chambers of the parliament in Japan, the new party president is almost certain to be elected prime minister in the extraordinary Diet session scheduled to be held on Oct. 4, succeeding the incumbent Yoshihide Suga.