JAPAN’S MAIN opposition party has re-elected the left-leaning former academic Yukio Hatoyama to take on the nation’s conservative government in a crucial election this year.
Mr Hatoyama (62) comfortably beat his rival Katsuya Okada in a weekend contest for the presidency of the Democrats (DPJ), after a financial scandal that cost veteran party chief Ichiro Ozawa his job. The new leader called on the party to pull together and help topple the Liberal Democrats (LDP), who are set to fall after over half a century of almost continuous power.
“All along, our rival has been the ruling . . . bloc and not each other,” he said after his victory on Saturday. “There were no sides the minute the election ended. I hope everyone will now unite around the DPJ to complete the clean-up of Japanese politics.”
Mr Hatoyama is already struggling to allay fears that he is too close to his predecessor, who, in the time-honoured tradition of Japanese politics, is expected to wield power behind the scenes, despite his resignation last week.
Accusations that Mr Ozawa illegally accepted donations from a construction firm cost the party some of its hard-won recent popularity, and threatened to pull it apart just as victory over the LDP neared. DPJ supporters said the charges were cooked up by the LDP and the public prosecutor’s office. The scandal helped prime minister Taro Aso’s coalition government to claw back some popularity in the polls, though it remains behind its rivals.
Most commentators predict that the DPJ, which controls the less powerful upper house, is on course to take the lower chamber in a general election before September – if it can stay clean.
An engineering graduate of Stanford University in the US, Mr Hatoyama comes from a fourth-generation political family and is the grandson of former prime minister Ichiro Hatoyama. He has led the DPJ twice before, the last time from 1999-2002.
As prime minister, he promises to slash Japan’s huge public works spending and transfer money to welfare, health and education. “After the DPJ takes power I want to build a society of love and fraternity,” he said last week. “I want to put politics back into the hands of the people.” He has also pledged to go to war with the nation’s powerful bureaucracy, and begin dismantling Japan’s close defence alliance with Washington.
Earlier this year he predicted the end of “US-led globalism”. His opponents say he lacks the killer instinct needed for hand-to-hand political combat with the LDP, which has been in office for all but 10 months since 1955 and is deeply embedded in the business and bureaucratic fabric of the country.
Critics believe Mr Hatoyama’s reforms will be derailed by the immediate task of the new government: tackling the nation’s worst economic crisis since the second World War.
The LDP is likely to exploit charges that Mr Hatoyama is a puppet of Mr Ozawa, a legendary political brawler and a hate figure among some.
