Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced that he is stepping down in September and will not seek re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
This is reported by Kyodo.
"Politics cannot function without public trust. I will now focus on supporting the newly elected leader of the LDP," said the prime minister.
Kishidaʼs support in Japan has waned amid revelations of his partyʼs ties to the controversial Unification Church and political donations from it to party fund-raising events that have gone unrecorded.
Fumio Kishida has also faced public backlash over wages not keeping up with the rising cost of living.
The politician who succeeds Kishida as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party will be forced to unite a fractured party, deal with the rising cost of living, escalating geopolitical tensions with China and the potential return of Donald Trump to the US White House.
Fumio Kishida became the Prime Minister on October 4, 2021.
- In 2022, Fumio Kishida even changed the composition of the government in order to distance himself from the scandalously known in the country organization "Unification Church". Shortly before that, an attempt was made on former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a pre-election rally, who later died in the hospital. The attacker told the investigators that his mother made "devastating donations for the family", and Abe allegedly promoted the ideas of this church.