Japan: Yoshihide Suga, an atypical profile for a government of continuity
Yoshihide Suga was chosen to succeed Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister of Japan on September 14, 2020 .. Kimimasa Mayama / Pool via REUTERS
Text by: Christophe Paget Follow
6 min
Yoshihide Suga, 71, will therefore be the next Japanese Prime Minister: his party the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD) appointed him on Monday, September 14 to succeed Shinzo Abe, in power for eight years (a record), and who had to announce his resignation for health reasons.
Yoshihide Suga, 71 years old, must be confirmed to this post on Wednesday September 16 by the National Assembly and for the end of the mandate which runs until the fall of 2021. With this farmer's son, very close advisor to Shinzo Abe since its return to power in 2012, the PLD, made the choice of continuity.
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Yoshihide Suga is an anomaly within the PLD.
He is the son of a strawberry farmer and a teacher, and his official website that he financed his studies by doing odd jobs as a handler in a cardboard factory, and in the large fish market of the capital city.
An unknown profile for the conservative party dominated by the heirs of great political families, dating back to before World War II, and sometimes even to feudal times.
Yoshihide Suga comes from the north of Japan, from the Tohoku region, "
one of the provinces traditionally considered as hard, poor
: the" land of snows "
", underlines Valérie Niquet, head of the Asia pole at the Foundation for strategic research and author from the book
Japan in 100 questions
: "
So it gives it a side" anchored in reality "which can be very sympathetic for a part of the Japanese population attached to traditions, to an image of ancient Japan which is in the process of disappearing in cities
”.
Yoshihide Suga moreover readily puts forward these rural origins.
At the heart of Shinzo Abe's domestic politics
After studying law, he became parliamentary assistant to an elected official from Yokohama, where he was elected in 1987, at the age of 28, municipal councilor.
Nine years later, he became a deputy for this large city in the east of the country (near Tokyo) where he was regularly re-elected.
Craftsman of Shinzo Abe's return to power in 2012, he was rewarded by the Prime Minister who appointed him spokesperson and especially secretary general of the government.
A strategic position where he is "
at the heart of all the implementation and even undoubtedly in part of the political and economic choices
" of the past eight years, explains Valérie Niquet.
"
And that's what undoubtedly made his candidacy unavoidable
."
It is he who is at the heart of the Abenomics, intended from the arrival of Shinzo Abe to revive the country's economy.
He also decided on greater control by the Prime Minister's office over large administrations to take them back in hand - in the process gaining a reputation as a skilled tactician, who succeeded in bringing the powerful Japanese bureaucracy in check.
It was again he who had launched a policy of opening up to tourism by promoting the granting of visas to Asian countries, particularly to Chinese.
Finally, according to
Time
magazine
, he played a major role in ensuring that the TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a free trade treaty aimed at integrating the economies of the Asia-Pacific and America regions) survive, in 2017, to the departure from the United States of Donald Trump.
In foreign policy, according to Valérie Niquet, he should continue the policy of Shinzo Abe: "
Firmness with regard to China by trying to preserve links because of economic interests, and absolutely preserve the alliance with the United States
".
Within the PLD, Yoshihide Suga is not affiliated with any faction.
He is not considered an ideologue, unlike the nationalist Shinzo Abe, criticized for trying to change the country's pacifist constitution, inherited from the post-war period, to include the existence of "self-defense forces" ( the equivalent of the army in Japan, but reduced to a defensive role).
At the end of 2013, Yoshihide Suga had advised Shinzo Abe not to go to the Yasukuni shrine, where, among other things, homage to Japanese war criminals is paid.
The Prime Minister had gone there anyway, and in the face of the fury of Seoul and Beijing, and criticism from Washington, had never returned.
A discreet man
The Japanese know little about Yoshihide Suga, who remained very discreet about his private life: married, father of three children, simple leisure activities (fishing and walking), no alcohol.
He concedes only one weakness: sweets and pancakes, offset by, he says, physical exercise: 100 sit-ups every morning and every evening.
As far as his character is concerned, press conferences have shown a man who is not very talkative and sometimes even not very helpful in front of journalists in case of embarrassing questions.
In short, an impression of stiffness, which remained despite the wave of sympathy he had aroused last year by announcing the name of the new imperial era, the Reiwa era, upon the arrival of the new Emperor Naruhito.
He had then earned the affectionate nickname "Uncle Reiwa".
During his campaign, Yoshihide Suga indicated that his priorities would be the fight against the coronavirus and the economic recovery of a Japan that has entered a recession, and that his government would not be an interim government.
Because the new Prime Minister will only have one year before the next elections, in the fall of 2021 (the end of Shinzo Abe's last term).
A year which, for Yoshihide Suga, could ultimately be reduced to a few weeks if early elections are organized as some wish, sometimes even within the PLD.
The question is whether these elections would consolidate the power of Yoshihide Suga or whether new negotiations within the party would lead to a new choice.
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