NEW DELHI, Sep 16: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday congratulated Yoshihide Suga on his appointment as Prime Minister of Japan.
In a tweet, Modi said under Suga’s Japan he looked forward to the two countries jointly taking the strategic and global partnerships to new heights. “Heartiest congratulations to Excellency Yoshihide Suga on the appointment as Prime Minister of Japan. I look forward to jointly taking our Special Strategic and Global Partnership to new heights,” he said.
Japanese ruling party leader Suga was elected prime minister in a parliamentary vote on Wednesday becoming the country’s first new premier in nearly eight years when his predecessor Shinzo Abe held the office.
Suga’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party used its majority in the powerful lower house of Parliament, which is empowered to pick the premier, to elect him to lead the world’s third largest economy as it tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Following the vote, Suga is due to enter the Prime Minister’s Office as the new leader and name his cabinet later in the day.
Suga’s appointment, two days after he was selected as LDP leader, brings the curtain down on Abe’s record run of almost eight consecutive years in the country’s top job. The 71-year-old Suga, who previously served as Abe’s right-hand man, has pledged to keep in place his former boss’s flexible fiscal stance and ultra-easy monetary policy known as “Abenomics.”
In contrast to Abe’s rarefied political pedigree, Suga hails from a rural area in northern Japan and took a job in a cardboard box factory when he first moved to Tokyo. He worked his way through university, before starting his political career as a secretary to a politician. He was first elected to parliament in 1996.
Suga’s home of Akita prefecture, where his family farmed strawberries, is one of the areas most affected by the economic malaise born of Japan’s shrinking and aging population.
While Suga has pledged to pick reformers for his cabinet, several Japan-based media houses claimed that he had already decided to retain key players of the outgoing Abe cabinet including Finance Minister Taro Aso and Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi. LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai, a veteran political broker, will also stay in place under the new administration, the party announced on Tuesday.
The role of chief cabinet secretary — which Suga held for a record term — will be given to Katsunobu Kato, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who most recently served as health minister, according to some media reports. Abe’s younger brother, Nobuo Kishi is expected to become defense minister while current Defense Minister Taro Kono might take over as minister for administrative reform.
Speculation about an early general election has simmered following a surge in support for the cabinet. Suga has repeatedly said it would be difficult to hold a vote while the coronavirus outbreak is still spreading. The power to dissolve parliament for a general election lies with the prime minister but the elections are not due in another year.
While Suga has little direct experience in diplomacy he has said Japan’s alliance with the U.S. would remain the cornerstone of its foreign policy and that he wanted to maintain stable ties with China, his country’s biggest trading partner.
(Manas Dasgupta)