LDP picks Fukuda to lead Japan

Japan's ruling party yesterday picked Yasuo Fukuda, an advocate of warmer ties with Asian neighbors, to be the next prime minister. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rallied behind Fukuda, who is seen as a competent moderate, hoping he can bring stability and stave off calls for an early election after a year of scandals that ended in the sudden resignation of Shinzo Abe.

The new party leader will be chosen prime minister tomorrow by virtue of the ruling camp's huge majority in parliament's lower house, but he will face a feisty opposition that won control of the upper house in a July election and can now delay legislation.

Analysts in China said it was no surprise that Fukuda won the backing of his party, defeating his rival — LDP Secretary General Taro Aso.

“Fukuda won the backing of the LDP's main factions. Japan's public also hail him for vowing to boost public confidence in politics by making Japan a society with hope and security,” said Jin Xide, deputy director of the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The 71-year-old veteran politician and moderate conservative may be just what Japan needs to revive the LDP and fill a political vacuum left by Abe, Jin said.

Fukuda served in the pivotal post of chief cabinet secretary in the Yoshiro Mori and Koizumi administrations with a combined tenure of three and a half years, the longest in the post.

“His world-view is profoundly influenced by his father, the late premier Takeo Fukuda, the creator of the 'Fukuda Doctrine,' which dedicated Japan to peace in Asia and greater economic and diplomatic cooperation with its neighbors,” said Liu Jiangyong, an expert at the Institute of International Studies under Tsinghua University.

“While valuing Japan's alliance with the United States, he also stresses the country's ties with its Asian neighbors,” said Liu.

“He has indicated that he is willing to more deeply engage Pyongyang in the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue as well as the abduction issue.”

Fukuda has said he will stay away from the Yasukuni Shrine where top war criminals are honored together with other war dead.

He favors a new, secular memorial where both civilian and military war dead are honored, Liu added.

His mounting task will be to push the extension of Japan's refueling mission in the Indian Ocean for US-led operations through parliament, where the opposition majority in the upper house has vowed to kill the legislation, according to experts.The bespectacled Fukuda, almost overcome with emotion, bowed to applause from LDP lawmakers and officials when the result of the vote was announced at the party's Tokyo headquarters.

“I'm not highly educated or talented, and I don't have much experience,” said Fukuda.

“But despite that, you have chosen me as party president. I am moved,” he said, with traditional Japanese humility.

Fukuda won a solid 330 of the 527 valid votes cast against 197 for outspoken rival Aso, a hawkish former foreign minister.

“The LDP must resolve to be reborn and obtain the people's trust,” Fukuda told a news conference, adding he wanted to hold policy talks with opposition leaders.

Fukuda also faces conflicting pressures to spend more to woo disaffected voters while reining in Japan's mammoth public debt.

The split in parliament has raised fears of a policy deadlock just as Japan needs action on pensions and tax reform in the face of a wave of retiring baby boomers.

Fans of Fukuda, chief cabinet secretary under Abe's predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, say his consensual style will be welcome after Koizumi's five years of combative reforms and 12 months of scandals and upsets under Abe.

“Safety, security and stability -- these are the things that many in the LDP are hoping for from Fukuda,” said Takehiko Yamamoto, political science professor at Waseda University.

Source: China Daily