The Olympics did not calm the bad political mood in Japan. In fact, on the contrary, they turned it on even more: this Friday, September 3, the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, confirmed that you will not run in your party’s leadership elections and, in this way, they will leave their position less than a year after taking office.
Suga, who has led the ministry since September 2020 after Shinzo Abe walked away due to health problems, has less and less popular support amid the health crisis.
Indeed, the main cause of Suga’s departure is the mismanagement that his government made of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Japanese media.
“Working against the coronavirus and at the same time in electoral activities requires a lot of energy, so I have decided that I can’t do both ”Suga said.
He added: “My mission as prime minister is to take care of the lives and livelihoods of the Japanese, so I am going to concentrate my forces on that.”
He also said that next week he will give a press conference to offer all the details, publishes Reuters.
Suga was to run in the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election, which is scheduled for late September. However, against all odds and due to the increase in coronavirus infections and the very slow vaccination campaign, he decided to step aside.
Everything indicates that whoever now wins those elections for being the leader of the PLD will become prime minister of Japan, since the party has the majority in the lower house. In 2022 there will be general elections.
Consequences: when the news broke, the shares of Japanese companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange began to rise, as their replacement is expected to boost Japan’s recessive economy with financial aid.
Suga, a 72-year-old former cardboard factory worker, was regarded as a great political shipowner with a very encouraging operational record.
The main index of the Japanese stock market, the Nikkei, grew more than 2 percent after Suga’s resignation announcement. The Nikkei, which groups the 225 most representative titles in the market, rose 584.6 points, to 29,128 integers.