Shinzo Abe former Japanese PM Shot dead

Caroline Ameh

The longest-serving leader of modern Japan, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot dead. He was gunned down on Friday while campaigning for a parliamentary election.

This came on the heels of his campaign activities in a country, where guns are tightly controlled and political violence almost impossible

Abe aged, 67, was pronounced dead few hours after the shooting in the city of Nara.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida while reacting to his incident said, “I am simply speechless over the news of Abe’s death. This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections – the very foundation of our democracy – and is absolutely unforgivable.”

The late prime minister was making a campaign speech outside a train station when two shots rang out. Security officials were then seen tackling a man in grey T-shirt and beige trousers.

The Nara police said the shooter, identified in the media as Tetsuya Yamagami, was a Nara resident and had worked at Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Forces for three years but now appeared to be unemployed. The police said they were investigating whether he had acted alone.

The former prime minister, Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, who held office in 2006 for a year and then again from 2012 to 2020, before stepping down citing health reasons.

He later revealed that he had suffered a relapse of ulcerative colitis, an intestinal disease.

While he was in office, he pushed more assertive policies on defence and foreign policy and had long sought to amend Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution.

He also pushed for an economic policy that came to be known as “Abenomics”, built on monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms.

He was succeeded by his close party ally Yoshihide Suga, who was later replaced by Fumio Kishida.