On August 14, Japan’s conservative Prime Minister Fumio Kishida surprised the country and his own camp by announcing that he would not be a candidate for re-election as head of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on September 27 and that he would thus automatically give up, in the following days, the leadership of the government, traditionally occupied by the leader of the majority party.
Although he was at his lowest in opinion polls, particularly following the uncovering of financial scandals, no other member of his party seemed able to easily regain control of the right-wing party that largely dominates Parliament. The leader, in power since October 2021, will have nevertheless felt that his unpopularity would paralyze his actions and prevent him from initiating his vague economic project of “new capitalism” based on a better redistribution of wealth. “Politics cannot function without public trust,” justified Fumio Kishida at a press conference.
