Japan’s incoming prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, is a master at getting things done. As the long-serving head of the powerful Cabinet Office under his predecessor Shinzo Abe, he has helped to formulate and implement many of the most significant initiatives over the last seven years. At the same time, he is also seen as a policy wonk short on charisma and is best known for the blandness of his daily press briefings. Unless Suga reveals hidden zest, Japan may be fated to return to its cycle of short-lived and unmemorable prime ministers, maneuvered by factions within the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled Japan for almost all the last 75 years.
Suga was elected party leader on Monday and will be named prime minister this week, replacing Abe who resigned suddenly two weeks ago due to ill health. Even the selection process for Suga implies the lack of enthusiasm. The vote was taken by the lawmakers and officials in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with a broader vote of party members rejected as having too high a risk of producing an unacceptable outcome. But even individual lawmakers had little say, with the powerful heads of the five major party factions deciding to throw their support behind the ultimate establishment candidate. Suga was handed a one-sided victory with 70 percent of the 534 votes. The public, which had no direct say, was only enthusiastic about Suga in comparison to his lackluster competitors. In a matchup against the other two, Suga had a 50.2 percent support rate in a recent survey, but just two weeks previously, when compared with a broader slate of potential candidates, he polled at just 14 percent.
