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TOKYO: Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga will join the race to succeed his boss Shinzo Abe as prime minister, local media reported on Sunday (August 30), as competition intensifies to succeed the leader. oldest in Japan.
Suga, a former Abe lieutenant in a key support role, has denied interest in the top job, but garnered attention with a series of interviews with Reuters and other news organizations, in the days before Abe’s abrupt resignation for health reasons.
A Suga administration would extend the fiscal and monetary stimulus that defined Abe’s nearly eight years in office.
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Abe’s announcement on Friday, citing a worsening chronic illness, laid the groundwork for a leadership election within his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The PLD president is practically certain of being prime minister due to the majority of the party in the lower house of parliament.
Suga decided to join the LDP career judging that he should play a leadership role given expectations for his ability to manage crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Japan’s deepest postwar economic dip, the news agency said. Kyodo, citing an unidentified source.
Calls to Suga’s parliamentary office seeking comment Sunday went unanswered.
Suga would join candidates such as former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
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A self-made politician in a country of political dynasties, Suga was chosen by Abe in 2012 for the pivotal role of Chief Cabinet Secretary, acting as the government’s mouthpiece, coordinating policies and assembling herds of bureaucrats.
“I am thinking of participating in the race for the leadership of the PLD. I would like you to support me,” Suga told the general secretary of the PLD, Toshihiro Nikai, in a secret meeting on Saturday, TV Tokyo reported.
He was quoting Nikai replying, “Please do your best,” which he said was a sign of his support for Suga.
“Everyone wants to be on the side of the winners, so if Nikai supports Suga, they will jump on the bandwagon,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University.
The LDP heavyweights aim to hold a reduced leadership contest around Sept. 13-15, public broadcaster NHK said on Sunday.
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Nikai and the head of parliamentary affairs, Hiroshi Moriyama, agreed on Saturday night to act quickly to avoid a “political vacuum,” NHK said, without citing any source of information.
Typically, PLD members of parliament together with rank-and-file party members hold a leadership vote in a one-month process. But in the case of a sudden resignation, an extraordinary vote can be called with participants reduced to parliamentarians and representatives of the local sections of the PLD.
The shortened version may put Ishiba, a longtime critic of Abe at a disadvantage, who advocates boosting regional economies in Japan’s depopulated hinterland. He is popular with the public, but less so with party deputies.
The PLD factions will play a dominant role in the elections, Nakano de Sophia said. There could be criticism from the media that this is not a real contest, which could give Ishiba a boost, but “not enough to change the momentum,” she said.
