TOKYO – Japan’s main opposition Democratic Party on Thursday elected a former cabinet minister as its first female leader on Thursday, following a last-minute hiccup when she was found to hold dual citizenship in violation of Japanese law.

Renho, 48, who goes by her given name only, hopes to repair the party’s image, battered by three years in power that were plagued by infighting, policy flip flops and unkept promises that handed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a landslide election win in 2012.

Born to a Japanese mother and Taiwanese father, the former TV announcer and mother of twins was embarrassed this week when she discovered she held Taiwanese as well as Japanese citizenship.

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AFP, Reuters

The law requires those with dual citizenship to choose one by age 22 and when opting for Japan, endeavour to renounce the other nationality. But there is no penalty for not doing so.

Renho had previously said she believed paperwork to renounce her Taiwanese citizenship had been completed when she was a teenager but was recently notified by the de facto Taiwanese embassy in Japan that her Taiwanese citizenship was still valid.

“I would like to apologise for the recent trouble I have caused by my unclear memory and statements,” she said in a speech ahead of the vote.

Renho is one of a handful of women to grab the spotlight lately in Japan’s male-dominated corridors of power, along with hawkish Defence Minister Tomomi Inada and Yuriko Koike, a former defence minister who is now Tokyo’s first female governor.

She admitted on Thursday her party faces an uphill battle against the LDP, which together with its junior partner dominates both houses of parliament.

“From here on, we will face a giant ruling party,” she said after the vote. “I’d like to call upon everyone to join me in becoming a party that does not criticise but makes proposals … so one day we will become Japan’s choice.”

An Asahi newspaper poll this week showed 40 per cent of those surveyed support the LDP against 7 per cent for the Democrats.

In an interview with Reuters, Renho said the prime minister’s signature “Abenomics” growth policies had stalled, and a Democratic government would not sharply shift Japanese foreign policies centred on Tokyo’s alliance with Washington.

Renho beat former foreign minister Seiji Maehara and party lawmaker Yuichiro Tamaki in the leadership election.

The recent death of a 28-year-old bridesmaid in Wenchang, Hainan province, from being forced to drink too much alcohol at a wedding banquet has stirred up public debate, the paper.cn reported on Monday.

A video clip widely circulating on Chinese social-media sites shows the woman in a black dress being egged on into drinking baijiu at the ceremony.

In the video, she later appears to lose consciousness, and is rushed to local hospital. Unfortunately, the emergency department fails to resuscitate her.

A preliminary investigation by local police shows the woman died after consuming too much alcohol, which caused vomiting and choked her to death.

According to the report, the family of the bridesmaid and the newlyweds are negotiating the liability and related compensation issues.

The incident has become a controversial topic on the internet over wedding traditions, as well as who should be held responsible for her death.

Bridesmaid dies after binge drinking at wedding banquet

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Video screengrabs

In China, drinking baijiu is usually considered an important part of social ritual, especially in business dinners and wedding banquets. But sometimes it just goes too far as the guests have to follow the hosts’ orders no matter how reluctant they are.

And this also puts too much social pressure on women as many men start crossing the borders in physical contacts, using indelicate language and forced drinking.

While some internet users said those who forced the bridesmaid should take full responsibility as they pushed her, others believed the woman should also be blamed as she was an adult and could have chosen not to drink.

10 ways alcohol wrecks your health

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Various sources

Ma Wenbin, a lawyer in Shanghai, said if it’s a confirmed case of alcohol poisoning, the bridesmaid and the person who forced her to drink, as well as the hosts should share the responsibility together, in which the bridesmaid should bear main responsibility as she was an adult.

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MANILA – Rodrigo Duterte shot dead a justice department employee and ordered the murder of opponents, a former death squad member told parliament Thursday, in explosive allegations against the Philippine president.

The self-described assassin told a Senate hearing that he and a group of policemen and ex-communist rebels killed about 1,000 people over 25 years on Duterte’s orders – one of them fed alive to a crocodile.

Many of the others were garroted, burned, quartered and then buried at a quarry owned by a police officer who was a member of the death squad. Others were dumped at sea to be eaten by fish.

Edgar Matobato, 57, made the allegations before the Senate, which is investigating alleged extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s anti-crime crackdown that police said have left 3,140 people dead in his first 72 days in office.

The then head of the Commission on Human Rights, Senator Leila de Lima, told the inquiry Matobato had surrendered to the investigatory body in 2009 and had until recently been in a witness protection scheme.

Duterte’s spokesman said the allegations had already been investigated without charges being filed while his son, Paolo Duterte, called the testimony “mere hearsay” of “a madman”.

Matobato said that in 1993, he and other members of the death squad were on a mission when they approached a road blocked by the vehicle of an agent from the justice department’s National Bureau of Investigation.

A confrontation degenerated into a shootout. Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of the southern city of Davao at the time, then arrived on the scene, Matobato said.

“Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off. Jamisola (the justice department official) was still alive when he ( Duterte) arrived. He emptied two Uzi magazines on him.”

His testimony fleshed out in gruesome detail for the first time long-running allegations Duterte was behind a death squad that killed more than a thousand people in Davao, where he was mayor for most of the past two decades.

Anti-crime blitz sweeps Philippines as Duterte comes into power

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AFP, Reuters

“Our job was to kill criminals, rapists, pushers, and snatchers. That’s what we did. We killed people almost on a daily basis,” said Matobato.

He said they killed mainly criminal suspects and personal enemies of the Duterte family between 1988 and 2013.

Duterte’s spokesman, Martin Andanar, said he doubted that the then mayor could have ordered the killing of 1,000 people.

“I don’t think he’s capable of giving a directive like that. The Commission on Human Rights already investigated this a long time ago and no charges were filed,” he said.

Another spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said the allegations needed to be properly scrutinised.

“Whatever testimonies, statements that the chairperson (of the Senate committee) are saying, we will have to have a proper investigation regarding that.” Duterte, who took office more than two months ago, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill thousands of criminals.

Matobato said the death squad received orders either directly from Duterte or from active-duty Davao police officers assigned at the mayor’s office.

Many of the victims were abducted by members of the group who introduced themselves as police officers, then taken to a local quarry where they were killed and buried, he added.

“The officers told us ordinary killings won’t do. They are sadists,” he said, describing to de Lima how the victims were strangled.

“Then we’d remove their clothes, burn the bodies and chop them up,” Matobato said, adding that he had personally killed “about 50” of the victims.

The bodies of other victims were disembowelled and dropped at sea to be eaten by fish, while others were left on Davao streets, their hands made to clutch a handgun, he added.

One of the victims was a foreign man suspected of being an “international terrorist”, another was the boyfriend of Duterte’s sister.

One was a local broadcaster who constantly criticised Duterte, four were bodyguards of a local rival, while two were enemies of Duterte’s son Paolo, who is now Davao vice mayor, Matobato said.

In response, Paolo Duterte called Matobato’s testimony “mere hearsay”. “I will not dignify with an answer the accusations of a madman.” De Lima said the rights body later dug up several skeletons of unidentified people at the Davao quarry.

De Lima, also a former justice secretary, said Matobato was put under the witness protection programme.

However Matobato said he left the programme and went into hiding, fearing for his life when Duterte won the presidency.

Asked why he left the death squad, he replied: “I am bothered by my conscience.”

Duterte sworn in as Philippines’ 16th president

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AFP, Reuters