Reuters and AFP

The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, August 14, 2024, p. 25

Tokyo – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will step down as leader of the ruling party in September, local media reported, ending a three-year tenure marked by rising prices and marred by political scandals. Kishida, whose public support has plummeted, will not seek re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), according to public broadcaster NHK and other media outlets citing senior administration officials. An LDP spokesman declined to comment. The decision by the ruling party leader to step down will trigger an election to replace him as party chief and, by extension, leader of the world’s fourth-largest economy. The successor could face rising living costs, rising geopolitical tensions and the possible return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency next year. As the country’s eighth longest-serving postwar leader, Kishida led Japan out of the Covid-19 pandemic with massive stimulus spending but then appointed Kazuo Ueda, a scholar charged with ending his predecessor’s sweeping monetary stimulus, to head the Bank of Japan. The LDP has run the country almost uninterrupted since 1945. Kishida is scheduled to hold a news conference today. The 67-year-old prime minister has been in office since October 2021, and his popularity has fallen sharply in polls due to high prices affecting Japanese lives.