Yoshihide Suga, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary and a longtime loyal assistant of outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has emerged as a favourite to succeed him in an upcoming internal party vote
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a longtime loyal assistant and the public face of outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in daily media briefings, has emerged as a favourite to succeed him in an upcoming internal party vote.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, gestures as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga looks in at the end of a press conference earlier this year.Suga officially announced his candidacy on Wednesday, a day after former foreign minister Fumio Kishida and former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba expressed their intention to run for the post.
The son of a strawberry grower in the northern prefecture of Akita, Suga is a self-made politician, a rarity in Japan’s largely hereditary business of politics. He earned his own tuition while working several part-time jobs to graduate from a university in Tokyo. He entered politics as secretary to a lawmaker for 11 years and served as a city assemblyman for nearly nine years before he was elected to parliament in 1994.
He has earned a reputation for his matter-of-fact twice-daily televised media briefings. He’s become known as “Uncle Reiwa” afterDespite his soft-spoken and low-key image, Suga, who is also in charge of Okinawa, has offended local leaders with his heavy-handed approach to push the central government's policy in a dispute over the relocation of a US Marine air station to another spot on the southern island.
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