Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died on Friday at the age of 67 after being shot at an election rally, AFP quoted local media as saying.
“According to a senior official of the Liberal Democratic Party, former Prime Minister Abe died in a hospital in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, where he was receiving medical treatment,” the Japanese national public broadcaster NHK said.
Abe was delivering a speech on Friday morning in front of Yamato Sidagi Station when he was attacked at around 11:30 am local time, while high school students who witnessed the shooting told the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, “A man came from behind and fired two shots.
Japanese police raided the home of a man arrested after the shooting of Abe on Friday, Japan’s national broadcaster said. Scenes broadcast by the authority showed a number of police officers, equipped with protective equipment and carrying shields, entering a building that the broadcaster said was the home of a man arrested after the attack on suspicion of attempted murder.
Abe served as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, spearheading ambitious economic reforms, establishing key diplomatic relations and grappling with scandals.
Abe was 52 years old when he became prime minister for the first time in 2006, becoming the youngest prime minister in the country’s history. He was seen as a symbol of change and youth, but he also represented the third generation of politicians from an elite conservative family.
In its infancy, his reign was turbulent and witnessed scandals and controversies and ended abruptly by his resignation. After first saying he was stepping down for political reasons, he admitted he was suffering from an illness later diagnosed as ulcerative colitis.
An economic policy bearing his name
Abby underwent treatment for months. When he returned to power in 2012, he said he overcame the disease with the help of a new drug.
And his second term, during which the prime minister, who remained in office for the longest term in Japan’s history, was dominated at home by his economic strategy called “Abenomics”, which combines increased budgets, monetary flexibility and structural reforms.
It also sought to increase the birth rate by making workplaces more considerate of fathers, especially mothers.
He also worked to introduce a controversial consumption tax in 2019 aimed at helping fund places in nurseries for children three and under, as well as to contribute to an overstretched social security system. But Japan’s economy began to decline even before the coronavirus crisis wiped out the remaining gains.
The way he dealt with the crisis was considered slow and confusing, which led to the decline in his approval rating to the lowest levels during his rule.
He was scheduled to remain in the position until September 2020, allowing him to attend an important event in his historical state, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which was postponed 2021, but it seems that his health problems managed to him again, and he announced his resignation in 2020 due to illness.
political storms
On the international stage, he took a firm stand against North Korea, but sought to be a peacemaker between the United States and Iran.
He made it a priority to build a close personal relationship with Donald Trump, in an effort to preserve Japan’s most important alliances, despite the slogan “America First” raised by the former US president, and tried to repair relations with Russia and China.
But here, too, the matter is not without inconsistencies. Trump remained determined to force Japan to pay more for the American forces deployed on its soil.
Tokyo failed to make progress in resolving the issue of the disputed northern islands with Russia, while a plan to invite Chinese President Xi Jinping to an official visit failed, amid rising domestic resentment toward Beijing.
During his tenure, he dealt with political scandals, including accusations of nepotism, which led to a decline in his support, but she was unable to harm his authority, partly because of the weak political opposition in Japan.
Abe did not repeat a controversial 2013 visit to a war memorial that sparked widespread resentment in the region and criticism from the United States, and stuck to a tough line toward South Korea over persistent wartime disputes, and continued to advance plans to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution.