Japanese politician Fumio Kishida was on Monday elected as the country’s 100th prime minister after he secured majority of the votes in the country’s Parliament, reported Reuters.

The 64-year-old replaced Yoshihide Suga, who had announced on September 3 that he was not going to run for a re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Kishida’s Cabinet includes a number of new faces with 13 of its 20 members getting a minister’s post for the first time, reported Kyodo News. The newly elected Japanese prime minister retained Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi from Suga’s Cabinet.

“This is the real starting point,” Kishida told the media, according to Kyodo News. “I will go forth with a strong sense of determination, with a strong resolution.”

Kishida will lead the ruling Liberal Democratic Party into a general election that is expected to be held by November, reported the BBC.

Kishida had served as Japan’s foreign minister from 2012 to 2017 in the government headed by Shinzo Abe. However, he has criticised Abe’s economic policies recently, saying that only the rich got richer under his tenure.

Abe resigned from the post of prime minister in August 2020 because of poor health. Suga replaced Abe as the prime minister of Japan in September last year. He had won the leadership contest within the Liberal Democratic Party by securing 377 out of 534 votes.

Before becoming the prime minister, he had served as the chief cabinet secretary under Abe between 2012 and 2020.

While announcing that he will not seek re-election as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Suga had said that the battle against the coronavirus had taken a vast amount of his energy.

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