Japanese PM to step down

On Sep 3, 2021

JAPAN: Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday he will not run for re-election as party leader this month, effectively ending his tenure after just one year, his party’s secretary general said. Suga announced his intention to resign at an emergency meeting of senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Toshihiro Nikai told reporters. “Today at the executive meeting, (party) president Suga said he wants to focus his efforts on anti-coronavirus measures and will not run in the leadership election,” Nikai said.

“Honestly, I’m surprised. It’s truly regrettable. He did his best but after careful consideration, he made this decision,” he added. But it was a decision that had not been foreshadowed, with Suga dropping no hints of his plans to leave office after just a single year in power and before contesting his first general election.

He came to office last year, stepping into the post left empty when Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned for health reasons.

His Government’s approval rating has nosedived to an all-time low of 31.8 percent according to a poll by the Kyodo news agency last month.

The son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher, Suga was raised in rural Akita in northern Japan and put himself through college after moving to Tokyo by working at a factory.

He was elected to his first office in 1987 as a municipal assembly member in Yokohama outside Tokyo, and entered parliament in 1996. -NDTV