Yoshihide Suga won the leadership race of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Monday and will in all likelihood win a parliamentary vote later this week and replace outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, said last month that he would resign due to health problems, ending a nearly eight-year term.
Suga, 71, known as Abe’s trusted aide, garnered 377 votes out of 534 votes cast and 535 possible votes in the LDP elections of members of the party’s parliament and representatives of its 47 local chapters.
Suga has a reputation for inscrutability, having become a key government adviser, spokesperson, and policy enforcer. So far, Suga has held several key political positions, including the most recent as Chief Cabinet Secretary.
He has also been the face of the Abe government, serving as its main spokesperson and defending decisions at daily press conferences.
Started from scratch
Suga, the son of a strawberry farmer, grew up in rural Akita in northern Japan. He came to Tokyo after high school and worked odd jobs so he could attend night college, before being elected to his first post in 1987 as a member of the municipal assembly in Yokohama, outside Tokyo.
Suga won a lower house seat in 1996 and was a long-time supporter of Abe, pushing him to run for a second term despite his disastrous first run in office, which ended after just one year.
When Abe defied the odds and returned to power in 2012, he appointed Suga to the powerful position of Chief Cabinet Secretary, from which he is said to have helped push through several landmark Abe policies, including loosening restrictions on foreign workers. .
He has held the key position of Chief Cabinet Secretary since 2012, serving as the Abe government’s main spokesman, coordinating policies and keeping bureaucrats in line. He referred to his experience in accepting the party’s nomination as leader and said it “started from scratch.”
“With this background, I was able to become the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party with all its history and tradition. I will dedicate everything to Japan and the Japanese people, ”he said.
Suga recommended in particular that he not make a controversial 2013 visit to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which neighboring countries consider a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Eyes ahead
Suga has said that he will continue Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy of hyper-easy monetary policy, public spending and reforms while juggling Covid-19 problems and an economy in recession. She has also said that she will face longer-term problems such as Japan’s aging population and low birth rate.
Suga, whose résumé is short on diplomatic experience, faces geopolitical challenges such as establishing ties with the winner of the November 3 US presidential election and balancing concerns about China’s maritime aggressiveness with bilateral economic interdependence.
Neutral figure
According to experts, Suga is more pragmatic than ideological, and legislators from the political spectrum of the PLD see him as a neutral figure. But his rather nondescript image was rebooted last year with the declaration of a new imperial era to mark the accession to the throne of Emperor Naruhito.
It was Suga who unveiled the long-awaited name for the era: Reiwa. And the image of him holding the hand-drawn calligraphy for the name earned him the affectionate nickname “Uncle Reiwa.”
He has only allowed occasional glimpses of his personal life with his family away from the spotlight, but revealed in interviews that he closes his day with 100 sit-ups in the morning and 100 at night, and that he has a soft spot for pancakes.
Speculation is growing that Suga will call snap elections for the lower house of parliament next month to increase his chances of winning a full three-year term as head of the PLD next year. The vote for the lower house is due to take place in late October 2021.
A Reuters poll showed that Japanese manufacturers were pessimistic for the fourteenth consecutive month in September, underscoring the enormous challenge facing the next leader.
(With contributions from the agency)
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