Uphill battle for Kan to put Hatoyama's wrongs to right
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Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) legislators on Friday decided they wanted finance minister Naoto Kan to step into the shoes of outgoing chief Yukio Hatoyama and rule the DPJ and, indeed, the country.
Outgoing Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his entire Cabinet stepped down collectively on Friday morning, prior to the Diet's vote that propelled Kan into his new post as DPJ chief having convinced the majority of both houses of parliament he was the better man for the job, not overly difficult being that his only opponent was Shinji Tarutoko, a relatively unknown lawmaker from Japan's ruling DPJ, known for his pro-Ichiro Ozawa affiliations which may have been to his detriment.
Having won the support of the Diet to become the DPJ's new leader, Kan was assured the role of prime minister because the DPJ holds a comfortable majority in the more powerful House of Representatives.
Kan, Japan's 94th prime minister and fifth since 2006, now has less than a month to get his party and his Cabinet battle-ready as upper house elections loom.
Unlike the outgoing prime minister, who has been rightly chastised for his political blunders including his involvement in political funds scandals and the debacle over the relocating of the Futenma base in Okinawa -- which eventually led to the division of the ruling coalition as the Social Democratic Party opted to jump ship -- political pundits believe that whilst Kan's record is not squeaky clean, he has the experience and desire to get Japan back on track.
Hatoyama, in his wake, has left many "wrongs" for Kan to put right, in fact the innumerable problems Kan now faces have been dubbed "The Poison Challis" in political circles.
Kan is not a "silver spoon" politician like many of his predecessors. His lineage has not equaled his political success. In fact his upbringing was unremarkable, something he himself believes is a positive.
"I grew up in a typical Japanese salaryman's family," Kan said at a recent conference.
"I've had no special connections. If I can take on a major role starting from such an ordinary background, that would be a very positive thing for Japanese politics."
Kan hails from Ube City in Yamaguchi Prefecture, southwest Japan, a city of just 180,000 people known for its chemical industry and for being the sister city of Weihai, in Shandong Province, China.
He graduated in Physics from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1970 before opening a patent office in 1974.
He was first exposed to politics in his younger years as an activist involved in a number of civic movements, Kan lost three elections before winning his first seat in the lower house in 1980 for the now-defunct United Social Democratic Party (USDP) with a "civil guerrilla" grass roots environmental campaign.
"I think Japan needs a leader like Kan to drive the nation through its fiscal mess and leave all the dirty politics associated with Hatoyama and Ozawa behind," Dr. David McLellan, a professor of Asian Studies at Waseda University and 20-year resident of Japan, told Xinhua.
"Kan's been in the game a long time and knows the pitfalls, as he's been in them. Most importantly he will understand how vital it is for him to do his utmost to gain the support of the Japanese people, who are extremely jaded about politics and politicians at the moment, and convince them that he is in for the long-haul and will do everything in his power to reduce the national debt and enact policies for economic and social reform -- but he must keep his pledges tenable. The Japanese people will be wholly unforgiving if he reneges on any promises," said McLellan.
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