Japan's Kishida stepping down

What happened

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he will not stand in his ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) leadership contest in September, paving the way for a new prime minister this fall. 

Who said what

Kishida's poll numbers have dropped steadily since he took office in 2021 amid high inflation and a scandal involving an LDP faction taking unreported campaign funds. In a televised press conference, he said he was stepping down because it's the "clearest way" to "show to the people the face of an LDP that is changing."

Kishida, 67, undertook campaign finance reforms and other steps to restore trust, but he ended up "with no cards left to play," Japanese political analyst Harumi Arima said to The New York Times. He has been a "dead man walking for quite some time," Michael Cucek, a Japan politics expert at Tokyo's Temple University, said to Reuters. "There was no way to add up the numbers so that he would get reelected."

What next?

The race to replace Kishida is "wide open," The Wall Street Journal said, but "none of the leading candidates" to becomes party leader and then prime minister is "likely to fundamentally change Japan's basic policies."

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