With the passing away of Shinzo Abe, Japan and World has lost a great political figure
By D N Singh
Shinzo Abe born 21 September 1954 was a Japanese politician who served as the Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was the longest serving PM in Japanese history. Abe also served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006 under Jurichiro Koijumi and was briefly leader of the opposition in 2012.
Abe was elected to the House of Representatives in the 1993 elections. When he was appointed cabinet chief secretary by Koijumi in September 2005, before replacing him as prime minister and LDP president in September 2006.
He was subsequently confirmed as prime minister by a special session of the National Diet, becoming Japan’s youngest post-war prime minister, and the first to have been born after World War II. Abe resigned as prime minister just after one year in office, because of medical complications . Shortly after his party lost that year’s House of Councillors Election . He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda , who became the first in a series of five prime ministers who each failed to retain office for more than sixteen months.
After recovering from his illness, Abe staged an unexpected political comeback, defeating Shigeru Ishiba the former Defense Minister , in a ballot to become LDP president for the second time in September 2012. Following the LDP’s landslide victory in the general elections that December and he became the first former prime minister to return to the office since Shingeru Yoshida in 1948.
Japan’s Longest Serving PM
He led the LDP to two further landslides in the 2014 and 2017 elections, becoming Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
In August 2020, Abe announced his second resignation as prime minister, citing a significant resurgence of his ulcerative colitis . He tendered his resignation on 16 September, upon the Diet electing Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as his successor.
Abe is a conservative whom political commentators had widely described as a right wing Japanese nationalist He was also a member of Nippon Kaigi and holds negationist views on Japanese history.
He wa considered a hard liner with respect to North Korea .
Abe’s premiership was known internationally for his government’s economic policies, nicknamed Abenomics which pursued monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms.
On 8 July 2022, that is today, Abe was shot from behind while delivering a campaign speech in Nara. He was reportedly in cardiopulmonary arrest and showed no vital signs immediately after the shooting.
Subsequently, Abe succumbed to the wounds caused by the fatal shot.
