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Al Jazeera (16 September 2020)

Kate Mayberry

As Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga spent nearly eight years as the right-hand man to outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Now, as Suga prepares to take the country's top job in an all-but-guaranteed parliamentary vote on Wednesday, he will need to capitalise on his political deal-making skills and his inside knowledge of Japan's complex bureaucracy to help him address the country's formidable challenges.

"Nobody has had as long a tenure as Suga," Kiyoaki Aburaki, managing director of BowerGroup Asia in Tokyo, told Al Jazeera. "He knows everything. He knows how government works. He knows how sectionalism has previously prevented change. That is a great asset for him."

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