Covid-19 proves to be PM Suga's Achilles heel as he bows out

The difficult decision against lifting a state of emergency over Covid-19 apparently weighed heavily on outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who last week announced that he would not run for re-election in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election.

Mr Suga had hoped to lift the restrictions as planned on Sunday, five days ahead of nomination day for the LDP vote.

This would have conveyed a sense that the situation was under control and perhaps boosted his flagging ratings in time to convince the party that he was the best man to lead them into a general election due by November.

In his first remarks to the press since the decision to bow out, he said at a news conference yesterday: "I tried to go through numerous simulations and I looked at various situations. All the time I was thinking that lifting the state of emergency on Sept 12 would be difficult."

Mr Suga yesterday announced the emergency measures would be extended by 18 days to Sept 30 - overlapping the entire duration of the LDP poll from nomination day on Sept 17 to the vote on Sept 29.

Insisting that the extension was to fulfil his promise to the public to curb Covid-19 infections, he reiterated that a "mammoth effort" was needed to manage the disease and to campaign for the LDP presidential election concurrently - especially for someone like him who did not belong to any party faction.

This was why he decided not to contest, Mr Suga said. As the LDP is the ruling party with majorities in both chambers of the Diet, or Parliament, its leader is usually chosen as the prime minister.

Even so, reports emerged yesterday that he was planning a visit to Washington - his second this year - at the end of this month for a hastily arranged in-person Quad summit with United States President Joe Biden and his Australian and Indian counterparts, Mr Scott Morrison and Mr Narendra Modi.

Mr Suga did not give weight to these source-based reports. The plan has been slammed by the opposition as inappropriate, considering his "lame duck status" and his pledges to stick around to oversee Covid-19 countermeasures.

Throughout yesterday's news conference, he also refused to give weight to theories that have been floated that he was stepping aside because of a political quagmire, having lost clout both with the LDP and the public.

Lawmakers dread the prospect of battling for votes with Mr Suga as the party's face. The public, weary of emergency restrictions, has sent Mr Suga's approval ratings plunging to new depths to about 30 per cent, from 70 per cent when he took office last September.

But Mr Suga said he still intends to run for re-election as a Lower House lawmaker in his bailiwick of Yokohama, where his close ally was trounced in mayoral elections last month.

In a seemingly valedictory news conference, Mr Suga also sought to shine a light on his accomplishments over the past year, noting such achievements as the successful Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the launch of the Digital Agency last week, the lowering of mobile phone fees, as well as the setting of ambitious climate targets.

Yet all of these have been dwarfed by Covid-19.

The Prime Minister defended his decisions when asked by The Straits Times if he might have done anything differently, such as by imposing stronger measures that could have reduced the need for protracted states of emergency that have lost the understanding of the public.

"We wanted to minimise the impact on people's livelihoods, and so the focused approach was very important," he said, adding that it was very difficult to ban people from going out in Japan.