Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Friday that he would not seek reelection in the ruling party’s leadership race this month, amid plummeting approval ratings over his handling of the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Suga\u2019s announcement means he will step down just one year after he took office to fill the remainder of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe\u2019s term. Abe resigned in 2020 because of ill health.<\/p>\n
Suga, 72, announced his decision during a party meeting Friday, telling party leaders that he intends to focus on the country\u2019s coronavirus crisis rather than recontesting the leadership.<\/p>\n
In a brief statement on Friday afternoon, Suga said he made the decision after he weighed the toll of running a campaign while managing the country’s response to the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth require a lot of energy \u2026 So I felt I should focus on measures to prevent the rapid spread of covid-19,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s leadership accepted his announcement, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party\u2019s secretary general Toshihiro Nikai said in a news conference Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest I am surprised, but I think he made the decision after thorough consideration. We believe that it is not appropriate for us to question him about it,\u201d Nikai said. \u201cWe will accept the leader\u2019s decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suga\u2019s term finishes at the end of September, and he had said previously that he would run for the party\u2019s leadership election set for Sept. 29. He was set to face at least one challenger. Japan\u2019s general election is scheduled for Oct. 17.<\/p>\n
The prime minister had been facing intensifying criticism over his government\u2019s handling of the coronavirus, which exposed Japan\u2019s lack of pandemic preparedness. The country was slow to launch its vaccination program.<\/p>\n
Tokyo and surrounding prefectures have been placed under a state of emergency for most of this year, but the measures are largely unenforced and have been falling on deaf ears among a pandemic-weary public.<\/p>\n
Suga\u2019s approval ratings tanked to below 30 percent in a national opinion poll conducted in late August by Japan\u2019s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.<\/p>\n
Moreover, it became clear that Suga had lost the confidence of senior party figures, said Tobias Harris, senior fellow for Asia at the Washington-based Center for American Progress and a former Japanese legislative staffer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem really is that the party has decided there\u2019s an election coming, he\u2019s a liability, we know he\u2019s a liability,\u201d Harris said. \u201cAnd they wanted a last shot at improving their chances of performing well in the [general] election \u2014 at least stop the bleeding and reverse the party\u2019s course.\u201das government struggles to contain spread<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Friday that he would not seek reelection in the ruling party’s leadership race this month, amid plummeting approval ratings over his handling of the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Suga\u2019s announcement means he will step down just one year after he took office to fill the remainder of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n