TOKYO – Japan’s governing party resisted any urge to pick a magnetic crowd-pleaser when it anointed Yoshihide Suga as its leader this week.
Suga, 71, put forward an everyone-old-is-new-again Cabinet dominated by ministers who will continue in the jobs they held under Shinzo Abe, who resigned as prime minister late last month because of ill health.
Meanwhile, the number of women in the Cabinet will actually decline to two from three.
After winning nearly two-thirds of the votes in Parliament and later being sworn in by Emperor Naruhito, Suga said at his first news conference as prime minister that stability was his top priority.
“When facing a national crisis, we cannot allow a political vacuum to exist,” he said. “In order to restore the safe lives and livelihood of all the people, my mission is to succeed and advance what the Abe administration has implemented.”(The New York Times)
