From Party President to Pariah: The Swift Fall of Shigeru Ishiba

In less than a year, Shigeru Ishiba has gone from being the newly elected president of Japan’s ruling party to a political pariah forced into resignation. His swift fall from grace illustrates the precarious nature of power within the Liberal Democratic Party.
Ishiba achieved his long-held ambition of leading the LDP last autumn, but his victory was fleeting. The crushing loss of the coalition’s lower house majority just weeks later was a devastating blow. A second electoral defeat in the upper house this July transformed him from leader to liability.
His centrist stance and inability to rally the party’s conservative base made him an easy target for internal factions. As his approval ratings sank and the party’s problems mounted, his rivals saw their opportunity to strike.
His resignation is the final act of a brief and unhappy premiership. It serves as a cautionary tale for his successor about the importance of maintaining party unity and, above all, delivering results on election day.