Calls for his resignation had grown since his Liberal Democratic Party suffered a crushing loss in July.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced his resignation as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), just weeks after its ruling coalition suffered a historic defeat in a July election.
Ishiba’s decision to step down on Sunday comes after he initially resisted calls from within his party to resign over the electoral loss, saying he wanted to make sure that a tariff deal struck with the United States was appropriately implemented.
“With Japan having signed the trade agreement and the [US] president having signed the executive order, we have passed a key hurdle,” Ishiba said on Sunday.
“I would like to pass the baton to the next generation,” he added.
Ishiba will remain as prime minister until the party holds elections to replace him as president of the LDP. His resignation deepens the political uncertainty facing the world’s fourth-largest economy.
After assuming his role last October, the 68-year-old politician saw electoral defeats wipe out his coalition’s majority in both houses of parliament.
The losses, stoked by voters’ concerns about the rising cost of living, made it more difficult for Ishiba’s government to implement its policy objectives.
Amid the country’s growing political instability, Ishiba was urged to resign by mostly right-wing opponents within his party, who viewed him as responsible for the results of July’s House of Councillors election.
Reports suggested that Japan’s agricultural minister and a former prime minister met Ishiba on Saturday evening to persuade him to step aside.
After announcing his resignation at a news conference on Sunday, Ishiba said he would begin the process to find his replacement.
‘He wasn’t seen as a strong steward’
“People were expecting that Shigeru Ishiba would resign, taking responsibility for the huge defeat in the upper house elections,” said Al Jazeera’s Fadi Salameh from Tokyo.
“There are very mixed reactions to his resignation,” Salameh noted.
Stephen Nagy, a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, told Al Jazeera that the LDP’s two electoral defeats, along with internal party criticism over his foreign policy towards both the US and China, had led to his downfall.
Nagy suggested “he wasn’t seen as a strong steward” by conservatives within the LDP, who thought he was too soft on China and had not managed Japan’s relationship with the US well enough.
“I think PM Ishiba was seen as someone who was unrepresentative of where the LDP and its conservative credentials were. And it was time for him to be pushed out,” Nagy said.
His potential successors include the conservative Sanae Takaichi, who narrowly lost to Ishiba in last year’s LDP run-off election, and Shinjiro Koizumi, the current farming minister whose family has long been involved in Japanese politics.
“Koizumi and Takaichi are seen as the most likely candidates. While Koizumi is not expected to bring major changes, Takaichi’s stance on expansionary fiscal policy and her cautious approach to interest rate hikes could draw scrutiny from financial markets,” said Kazutaka Maeda, an economist at Meiji Yasuda Research Institute.
Ishiba’s resignation comes just days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to slash tariffs on Japanese car imports from 27.5 percent to 15 percent, formalising an earlier agreement announced in July.
Under its terms, a 15 percent levy will be imposed against most Japanese exports to the US.
However, speaking on Saturday, Tokyo’s top tariff negotiator said the broad trade agreement is “not settled” yet, as US presidential orders on pharmaceutical and semiconductor tariffs have not been issued.
Leave a comment