The photo is all the rage on social media. Spokesperson: ‘It was just tiredness’
He had dozed off during the vote in the Japanese Parliament, which would soon elect him prime minister of the country, a circumstance immediately captured by a camera and ended up as a topic of debate on Japanese social media. It happened to Shigeru Ishiba, “guilty” of not being able to restrain himself during the counting of the votes in the run-off – which in the Tokyo Parliament is still done manually – a process which therefore took a long time.
“It was a reaction caused by a cold medicine, perhaps a little too strong, which induced drowsiness,” explained Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, when asked about the issue in a press outlet. Hayashi himself, portrayed next to the future prime minister in one of the shots commented with hilarity on social media, appeared incredulous at Ishiba’s timing, and then explained that the 67-year-old prime minister is “extremely busy every day and works until late at night”, and in any case he doesn’t it appears that there are health problems.
Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito lost their majority in the October 27 general election, forcing the prime minister to lead a minority government that political analysts say will face numerous challenges in carrying out reforms key, both on the internal front – starting from the approval of the budget – and on a diplomatic level, after the election of Donald Trump in the United States, Japan’s main ally.
