Japanese Prime Minister announces resignation after criticism for Tokyo Olympics

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has announced that he will step down at the end of September after his term expires. About it informs NHK. Suga decided not to participate in the new elections for the head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

According to him, the fight against the pandemic and the election campaign require a lot of energy, and he will not be able to do both at the same time. “I can’t do everything, so I had to choose. <...> I want to fully concentrate on the fight against coronavirus, so I will not participate in the upcoming elections. My duty as the head of government is to protect the life and health of our country’s residents, ”the prime minister said.

Suga took post of prime minister in September last year. Then 314 parliamentarians out of 465 possible voted for him. Shinzo Abe, who has headed the Japanese government since 2012, resigned due to health problems. The eight years that Abe was in power marked a record tenure in this position.

Kyodo notesthat Suga decided to retire early due to the drop in the level of support among voters on the eve of the parliamentary elections: if at the beginning of the year his rating was more than 60%, now he has almost halved – to 32%. In addition, his government has been criticized for ineffective measures to combat coronavirus, as well as in connection with the decision to host the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

At the end of July, a sharp increase in the incidence of COVID-19 was recorded in Japan. So, on July 31, a record was set for the entire pandemic – 12,337 cases of infection per day. A week later, the incidence beat a new record – 14,207 coronavirus patients. In total, more than 1.5 million cases of COVID were detected in the country during the pandemic.