Strengthened by big election gains last November, the leader of Japan's main opposition party used his party's annual convention yesterday to sharply attack Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as a "lame duck" and vowed to oust his long-ruling Liberal Democrats.
"This is a new start for us in our effort to become a challenger to the Liberal Democrats," Democratic Party head Naoto Kan said in remarks to party lawmakers just ahead of the two-day convention's main session.
"Koizumi's administration is already a lame duck," he said. "It has lost its reason for existing."
The convention, which opened Monday at a Tokyo hotel, was focused on party strategy ahead of parliamentary elections this summer.
It was also a chance for party members to formulate their response to Koizumi's controversial plan to send troops to Iraq -- which is seen as one of the popular leader's most vulnerable points.
In the Nov. 9 polls, Kan's party boosted its strength in the 480-seat lower house to 177 seats from 137. An election for the less powerful upper house is expected in July.
Although the Liberal Democratic Party has governed Japan for virtually all of the post-World War II period, and continues to hold a majority in the lower house, the Democrats have been emboldened by their significant gains in Parliament and voter impatience with the sagging economy and Koizumi's Iraq policy.
Kan, a popular liberal with a knack for public speaking, has in the past strongly criticized Koizumi's failure to lift Japan out of its economic slowdown.
But he has also focused his attacks recently on widespread concerns over Koizumi's backing of the plan to send about 1,000 troops to help with reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The dispatch, expected to begin in earnest next month, marks the biggest and potentially most dangerous overseas mission for Japan's military since World War II.
Though the plan has been welcomed by the US, Japan's most important ally, opinion polls indicate a majority of voters fear the dispatch could draw Japan into the ongoing hostilities in Iraq, or prompt terrorist attacks at home.
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