Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kunio Hatoyama, a close ally of Prime Minister Taro Aso, resigned yesterday, in a blow to Aso ahead of a looming election.
Hatoyama had insisted that Yoshifumi Nishikawa, president of Japan Post, should be replaced, though many in the ruling party have said Nishikawa should stay in his job, creating a dilemma for Aso in recent weeks.
“It is hard for the public to understand why the row has become such a big issue,” said political commentator Akira Hayasaka, adding that the internal row within the Cabinet gives a negative impression of Aso’s government.
PHOTO: AFP
“It will be a minus for his party ahead of the election,” he said.
Hatoyama had said Nishikawa should go because of Japan Post’s attempt to sell its nationwide resort complex to leasing company Orix Co, whose chairman helped craft a government plan to privatize the postal system.
The move would end the row over the personnel issue. But it would be a blow to the unpopular prime minister after opposition parties have criticized Aso for a lack of leadership in failing to solve the problem quickly.
Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faces a tough battle in a general election due by October, with the main opposition Democratic Party now leading in voter polls.
An opposition victory would end half a century of almost unbroken rule by the conservative LDP.
In a Yomiuri Shimbun poll on Monday, 39.1 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democrats, compared with 28.7 percent who preferred the LDP.
Japan Post was broken up into four state-owned firms in 2007 as the first step in a 10-year privatization process driven by former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Stakes in two of the four units, one for banking and one for insurance, are to be sold by 2017. But as the ruling party drifts away from Koizumi’s reforms, Aso’s government has suggested aspects of the plan should be reviewed.
It would not be the first time an Aso ally has had to leave the Cabinet. In February, Shoichi Nakagawa resigned as finance minister after being forced to deny he was drunk at a G7 news conference.
Support for Aso, Japan’s third prime minister in less than two years, fell below 30 percent in a poll by public broadcaster NHK this week after he flip-flopped on policy and had a public row with Hatoyama, even as the economy struggles with its deepest recession in decades.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the