Runoff likely as Democratic Party votes for sixth Japanese PM in five years

Chances of a clear winner are unlikely, so five candidates will be narrowed down to two to ensure a decision Japan’s trade minister, Banri Kaieda, on Sunday looked to be the frontrunner during the final day of campaigning in elections for the country’s next prime minister. The chances, however, looked slim for a majority-winning vote in the first round, so an immediate run-off was expected between the two top candidates. The election winner becomes prime minister owing to the Democratic Party of Japan’s majority in parliament’s lower house. Five candidates – former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, the finance minister, Yoshihiko Noda, former transport minister Sumio Mabuchi, the farm minister, Michihiko Kano, and Kaieda – are vying for the votes of DPJ peers. The next leader, who will succeed the outgoing prime minister, Naoto Kan, will be Japan’s sixth in five years. Whoever wins faces huge challenges, including a resurgent yen that threatens exports, the forging of a new energy policy following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, and the raising of funds to rebuild after the tsunami in the spring and pay for ballooning social welfare costs. The obstacles to governing, including a divided parliament and internal party bickering, have raised concerns that the next premier, to be selected in the DPJ vote on Monday, will end up being another short-lived leader. “Unfortunately, chances are that whoever wins, we’ll be going through the same debate in 12 months,” said Jesper Koll, director of equities research at JP Morgan in Tokyo. None of the candidates appear to have presented any detailed vision of how to end Japan’s decades of stagnation. “Their positions already seem to have been watered down,” Koll said. The party leadership race, instead, has been a battle between allies and critics of the party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, 69, a mastermind who leads the party’s biggest group despite facing trial on charges concerning political donations. Kaieda, who has secured the backing of Ozawa, had support from about 115 of the 398 Democratic lawmakers eligible to vote in Monday’s party election Maehara, 49, who sees beating deflation as the priority, has been jostling with the fiscal hawk Noda, 54, and Kano, 69, for second place, according to the Mainichi newspaper, while Mabuchi 51, lagged behind. Maehara ‘s chances have been undercut by rivalry with Noda, as well as by the scandal of his accepting donations from a Korean resident of Japan. If he won he would become the nation’s youngest prime minister since the second world war. On Saturday, Maehara told a news conference that he had received more than $7,000 in donations from four foreigners and one firm led by a foreigner, between 2005 and 2010, but had not been aware of the donations, Japanese media reported. Whoever takes over from Kan, who resigned as party head on Friday after months of criticism over his handling of the nuclear accident, will face a struggle to implement policies in a “twisted” parliament where opposition parties control the upper house and can block bills. Maehara and Noda on Sunday reiterated their call for a “grand coalition” with the main opposition parties. But Kaieda rejected the idea. “In a democratic parliamentary system a grand coalition is not preferable,” he said during a debate on NHK TV. Feuds over the role of Ozawa, a one-time heavyweight in the conservative Liberal Democratic party, who helped briefly oust the long-dominant party in 1993, have rattled the Democrats since his party merged with the DPJ in 2003. Some credit Ozawa’s political skills with engineering the Democrats’ leap to power in the August 2009 election. Others say his scandal-tainted image is damaging the party, which has seen its support sink among voters disillusioned with its failure to deliver on promises of bold changes in the way Japan is governed. Ozawa, who lost a tough leadership race to Kan last year, cannot vote in Monday’s party poll since his DPJ membership was suspended following his indictment over the funding scandal. Japan guardian.co.uk

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