Yoshihide Suga announces his intention to resign after less than a year as Prime Minister of Japan

Tokyo (CNN) – Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Friday that he will not run in the next election for his party’s leadership, thereby handing over the post of prime minister and opening the race to other candidates after a turbulent period of fewer. one year.

Suga, who took office last September after his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, resigned due to health problems, has seen public support drop as he struggled to contain the growing coronavirus outbreak in Japan.

“Working on covid countermeasures and electoral activities requires an enormous amount of energy, so I decided that I cannot work on both and should choose one of them,” he told reporters in Tokyo on Friday. “My mission as prime minister is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods, so I would like to focus on this.”

He added that he will hold a press conference next week.

Suga’s decision not to run in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership elections, scheduled for September 29, comes after 11 tough months in office marked by rising coronavirus infections and a slow campaign of vaccination.

The winner of the elections for the leadership of the PLD is expected to become prime minister, due to the majority that the party has in the lower house. General elections are scheduled to be held later this year.

Suga, 72, the son of a farmer and a former cardboard factory worker, was considered a successful political operator with a reputation for being able to get things done.

He was elected leader of the PLD last September with approximately 70% of the vote. His appointment was widely seen as an effort within the ruling party to promote an image of stability and continuity between Suga and the outgoing leader Abe. The two men had worked closely together during Abe’s nearly eight years in office, and Suga served as chief cabinet secretary in the Abe government.

However, Suga was unable to fully emerge from the shadow of his predecessor. His handling of the pandemic, in particular, has faced widespread criticism, with opponents criticizing his government’s slow and hesitant response.

But it was the drop in support within his own party that ultimately cost Suga his job, according to Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Suga had tried to pressure the PLD “into submission … hinting that it might even call early elections to pre-empt the ruling party’s presidential elections,” Nakano said.

“So supposedly now he was also working on cabinet reshuffle and also re-election of key figures in the ruling party to show leadership, and in both cases he was seen as out of touch and too pushy.”

Last December, Suga ruled out the need for a coronavirus state of emergency, only to declare one for Tokyo and several other prefectures the following month. Before that, his administration encouraged domestic consumption with a much-maligned “Go To” campaign, offering Japanese citizens deep discounts for travel. Experts have pointed to the campaign, which was finally stopped in December, as a possible driver of the spread of the virus in Japan.

Suga’s decision to go ahead with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, despite warnings from health officials, including the country’s top coronavirus adviser, was also highly unpopular, with polls showing that the majority of the public was opposed holding a major sporting event during the pandemic.

Citing the Olympics in particular, Nakano of Sophia University said Suga had been overwhelmed by Abe’s legacy. “The difficulty to [Suga] it was that he was trying to make his mark and also show that he is an independent politician. But he was so limited by political legacies that his predecessor left, “he said.

Although the scaled-down Games went without major incidents, Covid-19 cases rose to record levels this summer. Experts say that holding the Games while Tokyo was in a state of emergency also sent mixed messages to the public.

Even polls that showed public opposition to the Games softened when they started failed to boost Suga’s popularity with voters.

By August, his approval rating had plummeted to a record low of 31.8%, while more than 65% of those polled said they did not want him to remain prime minister, according to a Kyodo News poll.

Meanwhile, numerous states of emergency, including in Tokyo, have hurt businesses amid growing frustration over the apparent lack of a clear path out of the pandemic. Japan’s vaccine campaign has lagged behind other developed nations, apparently held back by bureaucracy and logistical hurdles.

CNN’s Selina Wang contributed to this report.