One-time opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama was elected Japan’s prime minister yesterday by parliament, ushering in a sea change in Japanese politics as he named his Cabinet.
Both houses of the Diet selected the 62-year-old self-proclaimed reformer after his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide victory in the Aug. 30 parliamentary elections, trouncing the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had governed nearly uninterrupted for more than 50 years.
As expected, Hatoyama named former DPJ secretary-general Katsya Okada to head the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Okada, a stern-looking former bureaucrat in the trade ministry, is regarded as well-versed in party politics but lacks experience in international diplomacy.
Okada faces his first challenge next week when he is scheduled to visit the US.
The principled 56-year-old with a squeaky-clean reputation is also regarded as a possible successor to Hatoyama.
Naoto Kan was named deputy prime minister and minister of strategy. The cofounder and former leader of the DPJ is spearheading the party’s ambitious plans to end the powerful bureaucracy’s sway over politics.
Kan is to lead the government’s new National Stategy Bureau, which is to wrest control over budget planning and day-to-day politics from the bureaucrats.
The former health minister is regarded as the right man for the job. During his tenure, he picked a fight with the bureaucracy in 1996 over a scandal involving HIV-tainted blood products.
The Finance Ministry will now be headed by Hirohisa Fujii, 77. A seasoned official in the ministry, Fujii is a close ally of DPJ secretary general Ichiro Ozawa, the driving force behind the party.
Hatoyama’s Cabinet faces a difficult road ahead as Japan seeks to emerge from its worst recession in the postwar era. The DPJ — founded in 1998 by LDP defectors, social democrats and former union leaders — has no experience in governing but must do so with the powerful bureaucracy, which ruled Japan hand-in-hand with the LDP.
Hatoyama has set his priorities as wresting influence for politicians away from the bureaucracy and revitalizing the world’s second-largest economy.
He has also pledged to make cuts in Japan’s emissions of greenhouse gases amounting to 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
His goal compares with an 8 percent cut envisioned within the same timeframe by the LDP.
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