Japan PM Kishida, Once A Safe Pair Of Hands, Fumbles Top Job

Tokyo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Aug, 2024) Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was seen as a safe pair of hands when his party installed him three years ago, but he soon became a liability as scandals and inflation eroded his popularity.

Kishida, 67, will step down next month after announcing on Wednesday he was pulling out of a contest for leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and ahead of a general election scheduled by October next year.

A father-of-three and keen baseball fan, Kishida is the scion of a Hiroshima political family and has a low-key presence sometimes taken for a lack of charisma.

Taking office in 2021, Kishida touted his listening skills and promised a fresh stimulus package to revive the virus-hit economy, now the fourth-largest in the world.

He vowed to tackle Japan's demographic crisis and promote a more equitable "new capitalism", but these policies remained vague, as did his plans to pay for them.

Seeking to reduce oil and gas imports, under Kishida Japan has steadily been bringing its nuclear power stations -- shut down after the 2011 Fukushima disaster -- back online.