Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru on Sunday announced he would resign after little more than a year in office, taking responsibility for two election losses during his tenure that saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lose its majority in both houses of the Diet, the country’s legislature. The LDP will now aim to hold an election to decide who will serve as its next leader—and as Japan’s presumptive next prime minister—in early October.
Ishiba, widely seen as a weak leader, proved unable to restore public trust in the party after a slush fund scandal devastated its image. Calls for his resignation grew last week after the LDP released its post-mortem report on the upper house election defeat in July. That assessment placed responsibility on Ishiba for failing to reassure the public that he was addressing voters’ concerns about inflation and political corruption.
With the LDP on shaky legs, party leaders may look to a more popular public persona to unite the party and win back the voters who opted for smaller populist parties in last year’s polls. The main contenders are Koizumi Shinjiro and Takaichi Sanae, neither of whom have officially declared their candidacy but are expected to do so given they lost out to Ishiba in last year’s leadership vote.
AloJapan.com