Japan Longest Serving PM Shinzo Abe to Step Down for Health Reasons

Tokyo: Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, said on Friday that he intends to step down because a chronic health problem has resurfaced.

He told reporters that it was “gut wrenching” to leave so many of his goals unfinished. 

Abe has had ulcerative colitis since he was a teenager and has said the condition was controlled with treatment. 

Concerns about Abe's health began this summer and grew this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health check-ups. He is now on a new treatment that requires IV injections, he said.

While there is some improvement, there is no guarantee that it will cure his condition and so he decided to step down after treatment Monday, he said. 

“It is gut wrenching to have to leave my job before accomplishing my goals,” Abe said on Friday, mentioning his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea and a territorial dispute with Russia.

He said his health problem was under control until earlier this year but was found to have relapsed in June when he had an annual check-up.

In a country once known for its short-tenured prime ministers, the departure marks the end of an unusual era of stability that saw the Japanese leader strike up strong ties with US President Donald Trump even as Abe's ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China.

While he pulled Japan out of recession, the economy has been battered anew by the coronavirus pandemic, and Abe has failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the US-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.

Abe is a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.

Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament. 

Abe became Japan's youngest prime minister in 2006, at age 52, but his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later because of his health. 

In December 2012, Abe returned to power, prioritising economic measures over his nationalist agenda. He won six national elections and built a rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan's defence role and capability and its security alliance with the US.

 He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan's international profile.

Abe on Monday became Japan's longest serving prime minister by consecutive days in office, eclipsing the record of Eisaku Sato, his great-uncle, who served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.

But his second hospital visit Monday accelerated speculation and political manoeuvering toward a post-Abe regime. 

Ulcerative colitis causes inflammation and sometimes polyps in the bowels. People with the condition can have a normal life expectancy but serious cases can involve life-threatening complications.

After his recent hospital visits were reported, top officials from Abe's Cabinet and the ruling party said he was overworked and badly needed rest. 

His health concerns came as his support ratings plunged due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its severe impact on the economy, on top of a stream of political scandals. 

There are a slew of politicians eager to replace Abe. 

Shigeru Ishiba, a 63-year-old hawkish former defence minister and Abe's arch rival, is a favourite next leader in media surveys, though he is less popular within the governing party. 

 A low-key former foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, Defence Minister Taro Kono, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, and economic revitalisation minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is in charge of coronavirus measures, are widely mentioned in Japanese media as potential successors. 

Abe was often upstaged in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, a former governing party conservative who is seen as a potential prime minister candidate by some. But she would have to first be elected to Parliament to be in the running for the top job. 

The end of Abe's scandal-laden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.

When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revitalise the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.

Perhaps Abe's biggest failure was his inability to fulfill a long-cherished goal of his grandfather to formally rewrite the US-drafted pacifist constitution. Abe and his ultra-conservative supporters see the US-drafted constitution as a humiliating legacy of Japan's World War II defeat.

He was also unable to achieve his goal of settling several unfinished wartime legacies, including normalising ties with North Korea, settling island disputes with neighbours and signing a peace treaty with Russia formally ending their hostilities in World War II.