Fumio Kishida elected as the new head of government of Japan

As expected, the major lower house of the national parliament elected the 64-year-old conservative as the successor of Yoshihide Suga on Monday with a majority of votes from the coalition parties. Kishida, who was foreign minister for many years under the former right-wing conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants to present his cabinet after his election as the new head of government. According to Japanese media reports, Kishida wants to have the lower house re-elected on October 31st. So far it was expected that the parliamentary elections would take place in the first half of November. Under his predecessor Suga, the polls of his ruling party LDP had fallen in the wake of the Corona crisis. In the meantime, however, the number of infections has fallen sharply in view of the now high vaccination rate and the state of emergency was lifted a few days ago.