The Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, tries to settle the episode of the assassination of Shinzo Abe, his predecessor, and to regain popularity.
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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reworked his government on Wednesday 10 August. Its primary objective: to stop the fall in its popularity rating, fell from 13 points in three weeks to 46 %, according to a survey of the NHK public channel. In addition to the rise in prices, the rise in tensions around Taiwan or the seventh wave of COVID-19, the Japanese hardly taste Mr. Kishida’s decision to organize national funeral for Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister murdered July 8. The policies carried out by Mr. Abe, especially in security matters, are not unanimous and revelations on his links with the Church of Unification, better known as the Moon sect, shocked opinion.
The author of the assassination, Tetsuya Yamagami, explained his gesture by relations between Mr. Abe with the organization, of which his mother was a follower. The shock is all the greater since, since the assassination, the revelations have been linked on the relations between the elected officials of the liberal democratic party (PLD in power) and the sect, to the point of weakening the government. Hence Mr. Kishida’s decision to separate from ministers deemed too close to the Church of Unification. Exit therefore Nobuo Kishi, Shinzo Abe’s little brother, ousted from the Ministry of Defense after recognizing that followers of the sect had campaigned for him. Ditto for the Minister of the Economy, Koichi Hagiuda, recased in the PLD political affairs department. Also end of the game for Satoshi Ninoyu, the president of the National Commission for Public Security, who pays Mr. Abe’s security errors. He admitted to having attended events related to the Church of Unification, but “only to meet people as a politician”.
The new team, however, is not a virgin of any link with the sect. Akihiro Nishimura, the new Minister of the Environment, explained that he was not aware that the Church was the organizer of an event he attended. “I thought it was a conservative forum,” he defended. The very nationalist Sanae Takaichi, new Minister of Economic Security, close to Shinzo Abe and one of the only two women in the cabinet, admitted that she was the subject of a report in a publication of the sect in 2001.
simple “ripolinage”
“I named personalities who agreed to reconsider their links with the Church of Unification,” said Kishida, adding that the movement does not seem to have “inappropriately influenced PLD policies” . Qualifying the reshuffle of simple “ripolinage”, Kenta Izumi, of the Constitutional Democratic Party, the main formation of the opposition, criticizes the PLD for not having “fully clarified the links between many parliamentarians and the Church. not regain the confidence of opinion “.
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