Tokyo: Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, was on Monday elected as the new president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to to succeed Shinzo Abe who has quit as Prime Minister of the country.
At a joint plenary meeting of party members from both houses of the Diet and delegates from local chapters, Suga, 71, won 377 votes and was the front-runner from the beginning of the election race garnering the support of five of the LDP’s seven major factions and a hefty number of independent lawmakers.
Such factions included the largest within the LDP led by Hiroyuki Hosoda, a former secretary general, along with another led by LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai. Suga himself, however, does not belong to any factions.
Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, a political heavyweight in the LDP, who serves concurrently as finance minister, also threw the weight of the faction he heads behind Suga.
The other two contenders, Fumio Kishida, 63, a former foreign minister, secured 89 votes, while Shigeru Ishiba, 63, a former defense minister and a rare critic of Abe within the LDP, received 68 votes.
Suga, who has been one of Abe’s closest confidants for almost eight years, said after the election that he will continue Abe’s policies amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The election was forced after the incumbent prime minister Shinzo Abe’s abrupt announced late last month that he was stepping down due to a recurrent health issue. Abe was in power as Prime Minister that also brought his first tenure as prime minister to an abrupt end in 2007.
Suga’s term as LDP president will be limited to the remainder of Abe’s current three-year term through September 2021.
However, speculation has been swirling recently that he may call a general election as early as next month to improve his chances of winning a full three-year term as LDP leader and capitalize on the party’s popularity, which tends to improve after a leadership change.
