Yoshihide Suga elected as new head of Japan’s ruling party

Yoshihide Suga was elected as the new head of Japan’s ruling party, received 377 votes in the Party election to pick a successor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who announced last month that he would resign due to health problems.

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Once he formally takes over, Suga will serve out Abe’s remaining term as party chief until September 2021.

Suga is currently the chief Cabinet secretary of Abe’s government and he will then be confirmed as Prime Minister by a special session of the country’s parliament.

The closed-door politics also apparently led lawmakers to support Suga in hopes of getting favourable party and cabinet posts in the new administration.

Despite his low-key image as Abe’s right-hand man, Suga is actually known for his iron-fist approach to getting jobs done as a policy co-ordinator and influencing bureaucrats by using the centralized power of the prime minister’s office.