Former Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada was yesterday named leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), as it struggles to rebuild support following two straight general election losses.
Okada, 61, beat Goshi Hosono, a former nuclear policy minister, by 133 points to 120 in a run-off vote at a special party conference in Tokyo. Akira Nagatsuma, a former health minister, lost in the first-round of voting.
Chosen the DPJ’s leader for a second time, Okada’s task is to reunite a party hobbled by factionalism, shifting policies and funding shortages, and claw back ground lost to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
While Okada agrees with much of Abe’s economic agenda, he is likely to attack the prime minister over policies that he sees as widening the gap between rich and poor.
“Rebuilding the Democratic Party won’t be easy,” Okada said before the vote. “What do we need to regain the trust of the Japanese people? We need to change.”
Okada stepped down from an earlier term as DPJ leader after a 2005 election defeat.
He was deputy prime minister in 2012 when the party lost power to the LDP after voters tired of leadership changes and policy reversals on security and tax during its three years in power.
“Abe has got the opponent he least wanted,” Minoru Morita, an independent political analyst, said by telephone after the vote. “Okada has had the upper hand in their debates. There will be some tough battles in parliament.”
The DPJ, which is backed by Japan’s labor union federation, must encourage a diverse range of people, including women, those in the regions and non-governmental organizations, to work together, Okada said.
While Abe’s economic policies are not wrong, the DPJ must come up with its own proposals, he said.
“Japan has become a country with an extremely large gap between rich and poor,” said Okada, the son of a supermarket magnate. “Don’t you think the DPJ should build a society with less disparity, one that can be a model for the world?”
Abe’s victory in last month’s election left the DPJ with only 72 seats in parliament’s more powerful lower house, compared with 290 for the LDP.
Former DPJ leader Banri Kaieda lost his seat, sparking yesterday’s party ballot.
The lack of a viable opposition was the main reason Abe’s coalition won a second two-thirds majority, according to three in four voters surveyed by the Asahi Shimbun in a Dec. 15-Dec. 16 opinion poll.
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