TOKYO: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to resign over health problems, top lawmakers said Friday, in a bombshell development will end a record-setting tenure with no clear successor in yet in place.
Abe announced his plan at an emergency meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, senior lawmaker and close Abe ally Tomomi Inada told reporters.
“I heard his plan. It was sudden and unexpected. I am stunned,” she said.
Other lawmakers confirmed the account.
The news came hours before Abe was due to give a press conference to address speculation about his health.
It sent Tokyo stocks plunging more than two percent, with the benchmark Nikkei 225 index reversing earlier gains.
Inada told reporters Abe will stay in office until a successor is decided, most likely through an election of ruling party lawmakers and members.
Rumours about Abe’s possible resignation had intensified after two recent surprise hospital visits for unspecified medical checks, but in recent days, senior government officials had suggested he would serve out the rest of remaining year in office.
But the decision nonetheless comes as “a big surprise,” said Shinichi Nishikawa, a professor of political science at Meiji University in Tokyo.
“His resignation comes at a time when Japan is facing tough issues, including measures against the coronavirus,” Nishikawa told AFP.
“There may be political confusion.”
The resignation will be a bitterly familiar scenario for Abe, who stepped down just one year into his first term, in 2007, over health problems.
He was subsequently diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which he said upon return to office in 2012 was under control with the help of new medication.
The decision comes despite the insistence of government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Friday morning that Abe remained in good health.
“I see him every day and feel that there is no change in his condition,” Suga told reporters at a regular press conference.
And on Thursday, Suga told Bloomberg News that Abe would “of course” be able to serve out the rest of his term, which ends September 2021.
“He’ll be all right,” he said.
But the health woes appear to have piled on the pressure for Abe, who this week broke the record for the longest uninterrupted stint in office in Japanese history.
Despite the relatively contained impact of the coronavirus in Japan, Abe’s government has been heavily criticized for its approach to the crisis, including a U-turn on stimulus payments and a much-mocked decision to issue each household two cloth face masks.
The prime minister has also seen his signature “Abenomics” economic policy come under increasing strain, with the country already slumping into recession even before the coronavirus crisis hit.
Still, experts had said there was little appetite within the Liberal Democratic Party for Abe to depart early, especially as there is no consensus yet on his successor.
And with Japan’s fragmented opposition so far unable to capitalize on the government’s falling approval ratings, there had appeared to be little immediate pressure on him to step down.
If Abe’s health required him to leave office immediately, the premiership would pass initially to a caretaker government.
But initial reports suggest Abe plans to stay in office while a leadership contest is organized and party officials and members vote on his successor.
Among the candidates are deputy prime minister Taro Aso — who also serves as finance minister — and chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, as well as former and current cabinet ministers.
Japan PM Abe to resign over health: lawmakers
https://arab.news/4un2e
Japan PM Abe to resign over health: lawmakers
- Abe announced his plan at an emergency meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party
- News came hours before Abe was due to give a press conference to address speculation about his health
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
