TOKYO: Shigeru Ishiba took over Japan’s ruling party promising to revive it from scandal. Less than a year later, he is stepping down as prime minister after three electoral losses shook the party’s grip on power.
An unlikely premier who vowed to make Japan “smile again”, Ishiba won the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election on his fifth attempt in late September 2024. That put him at the helm of a party that has dominated Japan’s postwar politics but was at one of its lowest ebbs since its founding in 1955.
His brief tenure as prime minister and party president was marked by months of fraught tariff negotiations with US President Donald Trump’s administration, details of which were finalised just days before he was set to stand down.
At home, the self-described lone wolf saw support for his administration steadily erode as his government struggled to contain consumer price rises that fuelled growing discontent over squeezed earnings and sluggish economic growth.
THIRD STRAIGHT LOSS
In the upper house election in July, voters handed Ishiba, 68, a resounding rebuke. Many backed opposition groups promising tax cuts and tighter controls on immigration blamed for depressing wages, including the far right Sanseito party. The LDP and its coalition partner Komeito lost their majority in the chamber.
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