Japan PM Yohihide suga to step down

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday that he would not run in the ruling center-right party’s leadership election this month, indicating he would step down after just a year as the country’s leader.

Suga, 72, has struggled with low public approval ratings over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and for pressing ahead with holding the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer over the objections of health experts and much of the public.

Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga informed recently that he does not plan to run again in the election that will be held by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September 2021. The party will have choose a new Prime Ministerial candidate. Suga had surpassed Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had resigned in September 2020 citing ill health.