Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe has resigned from his post citing health reasons. Abe hosted a press conference in Tokyo on August 28, 2020 and made it official while apologizing to the people of his country due to his inability to fulfill his duties during the coronavirus pandemic. The Prime Minister during the press conference said that despite the fact that he still has one more year in terms of his tenure, he is facing challenges and has decided to stand down as the Prime Minister.
Japan’s longest standing Prime Minister is getting himself treated for Colitis which is a non-curable inflammatory bowel disease, which was one of the major reasons for his resignation as the Prime Minister in 2007 that ended his first term of just more than a year in office. It was on August 24, 2020 when Abe had visited the Keio University Hospital in Tokyo which marked his second visit within a week.
The Prime Minister added that for almost eight years he had tried to control his chronic disease but in the month of June, 2020 he underwent regular checkup and that was when a sign of the disease surfaced. He also said that, this was when he decided to discontinue his job as the Prime Minister. Abe concluded that he needs to fight the disease and needs to be treated.
While Shinzo Abe took charge of his health, it had a negative impact on the market and the Japanese Yen rose 0.3 percent against the US dollar. He had previously resigned in 2007 but was reelected in 2012 and ever since then he was a prominent face in the Japanese politics as he won the term the third time in 2017 and the fourth in 2019 despite him being involved in a number of controversies. Abe was born on September 21, 1954 in Tokyo in a prominent political family while both his grandfather and grant uncle have served as Prime Minister.
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