Hard blow for executive in anticipation of the Senate elections
The Minister of Agriculture in Japan, Taku Eto, was forced to resign, due to a gaffe committed due to comments considered “inappropriate” on rice prices, which in Japan have doubled in the last year, weighing down the budgets of families, in a context already complicated by the imperial of inflation. The decision represents a serious blow for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whose popularity is on the historical mimices in anticipation of the elections for the renewal of the Senate in July.
During a fundraising event organized by the local section of his party, Sunday, the head of the Dicastery had declared amused “not to buy the rice for some time because it was given to him in large quantities by the supporters, to the point of being able to start even to sell it”. Eto’s gaffe arrived shortly after the Ministry of Agriculture had decided to release further emergency stocks until July, in the hope of bringing out the prices. Eto, 64, announced that he will leave the assignment a few hours before Ishiba collided in Parliament with the leaders of the country’s opposition parties, united in asking for their resignation.
According to the local media in his place, Shinjiro Koizumi, 44 years old, the son of the former Prime Minister Junichiro and former former Minister of the Environment, who had been successful in the presidential elections of the Democratic Liberal Party last year, should take over last.
