On September 16, 2020, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, 71, won election to office in Parliament, where his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) commands a comfortable majority. Suga replaced former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who resigned for health reasons.
Suga, a strawberry farmer’s eldest son, defied tradition by leaving for Tokyo rather than taking over the family farm. He worked at a cardboard factory before entering university and paid his tuition by working part-time jobs, including one at the Tsukiji fish market.
He was a secretary to former trade minister Hikosaburo Okonogi for 11 years before being elected to his first office in 1987 as a municipal assembly member in Yokohama. He entered Parliament in 1996 at age 47, a late start compared to Abe, a third-generation blue-blood politician who was elected to parliament at age 29. While accepting the party’s nomination as leader, Suga stated that he “started from zero”.
Suga has a reputation for inscrutability and has been a key government adviser and policy enforcer. He also served as chief cabinet secretary, an office that involves coordinating policy and bringing government agencies and the bureaucracy to heel. He has also been the face of Abe’s government as its top spokesman.
Suga has earned a stern reputation and is known for stubbornness, an iron-fist approach as a policy coordinator and influencing bureaucrats using the power of the prime minister’s office, leading politics watchers to call him the “shadow prime minister”. Some bureaucrats who opposed his policies have said they were expelled from government projects or transferred to other posts. Suga recently said he would continue to do so.
In 2019, his image got a reboot with the declaration of a new imperial era to mark the ascent to the throne of Emperor Naruhito. It was Suga who unveiled the much-awaited name for the era: Reiwa. His picture holding up the hand-drawn calligraphy for the name earned him the affectionate nickname “Uncle Reiwa”.
He keeps his wife and three children far from the spotlight. But he has revealed in interviews that he bookends his day with 100 sit-ups in the morning and 100 in the evening, and has a weakness for pancakes.
Suga has said his top priorities will be fighting the coronavirus and working to improve a Japanese economy battered by the pandemic. He defended favouritism and cronyism scandals that occurred under Abe, saying the investigations into the cases were properly handled. He says he is a reformist and has broken bureaucratic barriers to secure policy achievements. He credits himself for a boom in foreign tourism, as well as lowering cell phone bills and strengthening agricultural exports.
Suga supports the historic change likely to happen in Japan’s immigration policy to allow more foreign labourers to offset the decline in Japan’s workforce as the country ages. He also has plans to form a new agency to promote digital transformation, an area where Japan lags and has delayed efforts to fight the coronavirus.
Suga also inherits other challenges, including China, which continues its assertive actions in regional seas. He will have to decide what to do with the Tokyo Olympics, postponed to next summer due to the pandemic, and foster a good relationship with whoever wins the U.S. presidential race.
Courtesy: India Today, Sept 16, 2020; Associated Press, Sept 16, 2020