http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/asia/02japan.html?th&emc=th
Japan’s Premier Will Quit as Approval Plummets
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: June 1, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan, who swept into power last year with bold promises to revamp the country, then faltered over broken campaign pledges to remove an American base from Okinawa, announced Wednesday that he would step down.
Mr. Hatoyama faced growing pressure to quit, eight months after taking office, amid criticism that he had squandered an electoral mandate to change Japan’s sclerotic postwar political order.
Since taking office in September, he had come to be seen as an indecisive leader. This image was reinforced by his wavering and eventual backtracking on the base issue, which set off huge demonstrations on Okinawa and drove his approval ratings below 25 percent.
Calls had been rising within his Democratic Party for him to step aside before elections on July 11 that are seen as a referendum on the party’s first year in power.
“Unfortunately, the politics of the ruling party did not find reflection in the hearts of the people,” Mr. Hatoyama told an emergency meeting of Democratic lawmakers, broadcast live on television. “It is regrettable that the people were gradually unwilling to listen to us.”
Mr. Hatoyama is the fourth Japanese prime minister to resign in four years, which is likely to renew soul-searching about Japan’s inability to produce an effective leader and to feed concerns that political paralysis is preventing Japan from reversing a nearly two-decade-long economic decline. Mr. Hatoyama, who was teary-eyed as he announced his departure, was also following the common Japanese practice of leaders’ resigning to take responsibility for failure.
His resignation will not force a change in government, because the Democrats still hold a commanding majority in Parliament’s Lower House, which chooses the prime minister. But it will be a damaging blow to a party that had taken power in a landslide election victory that ended more than a half-century of nearly unbroken one-party control.
Mr. Hatoyama took power with vows to challenge the bureaucracy’s grip on postwar governing and revive Japan’s economy. Instead, his inexperienced government appeared to become consumed by the issue of the Okinawa base and a series of investigations into the political financing of Mr. Hatoyama and his backer in the party, Ichiro Ozawa.
Mr. Hatoyama said Wednesday that Mr. Ozawa, the Democratic Party’s secretary general and its shadowy power broker, would also resign. Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, said the party would meet Friday to choose a new prime minister. Candidates include party veterans Naoto Kan, the finance minister, and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
The contention over the American base, which dragged on for months, was emblematic of Mr. Hatoyama’s inability to make up his mind, or follow through on ambitious campaign promises.
The Democrats failed to deliver on a number of pledges, from eliminating highway tolls to finding enough savings from cutting waste to finance new subsidies like cash allowances for families with children. Instead, the spending ended up raising concerns that Japan’s ballooning deficit could one day lead to a Greek-style financial collapse.
Mr. Hatoyama had been expected to be a diplomatic personality who would be able to build consensus among the members of his ideologically broad party. He had appeared to be naturally suited to the job, as a political blue blood who hailed from one of Japan’s most powerful families. His grandfather had been a founding member of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose long grip on power Mr. Hatoyama’s Democrats ended last summer.
During the election campaign, he had drawn attention by pledging to end Japan’s postwar dependence on the United States, and to build closer ties with China and the rest of Asia.
M. Amedeo Tumolillo contributed reporting from New York City.
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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100602x1.html
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Hatoyama quits as prime minister
Futenma fiasco, funds scandals proved undoing; Ozawa also out
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
Ending a turbulent eight months in office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he will step down to take the blame for his Cabinet’s plunging approval rate, brought on by funds scandals and the row over relocating a U.S. base in Okinawa.
Hatoyama also said Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, embroiled in a shady transfer of political funds, will step down from the party’s No. 2 post.
“I apologize for the amount of confusion caused,” Hatoyama told a general meeting of DPJ lawmakers held at the Diet. “I thank you all for letting me lead (the administration) for the duration of eight months. I hope you will be able to create a new DPJ and a new government,” he said.
DPJ members from both chambers of the Diet are scheduled to choose the party’s new leader at a meeting Friday. The DPJ’s new head will be elected prime minister the same day at the Diet, where the party holds a comfortable majority in the Lower House.
Ozawa reportedly said the new Cabinet will probably be formed Monday and he “regrets” he couldn’t fulfill his duty to support Hatoyama.
Despite the slide in the opinion polls to less than 20 percent, Hatoyama was widely expected to remain in his post with only two weeks left in the ongoing Diet session and about a month until a crucial Upper House election.
But during the surprising farewell speech Wednesday, Hatoyama pointed to two blunders that continued to cloud his administration.
“First is the issue over Futenma’s relocation,” Hatoyama said, apologizing for his unsuccessful bid to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa despite months of searching for an alternative.
Hatoyama’s decision to keep the base in Okinawa resulted in the departure of the Social Democratic Party from the ruling coalition, after SDP chief Mizuho Fukushima was sacked as consumer affairs minister for refusing to sign the Cabinet resolution on the base deal.
The prime minister reiterated the importance of keeping Futenma in Okinawa for regional security, but said he hoped Japan “will be able to provide protection for itself” in the future and free Okinawa from the burden of hosting the bases.
Hatoyama also pointed to the continued political funds scandals that dogged his party as a reason for leaving office.
“I never imagined myself” being embroiled in such a scandal, he said, touching on the unregistered donations from his mother to his political funds management body that led to the indictment of his former secretaries.
Ozawa’s case, involving irregularities related to the purchase of a plot of Tokyo land in 2004, also resulted in his aides being indicted. Ozawa quit the DPJ presidency last spring over a separate funds scandal.
In addition to Ozawa resigning his post, Hatoyama urged DPJ Lower House member Chiyomi Kobayashi, also involved in a scandal involving illegal donations, to step down as a lawmaker.
While Hatoyama in his speech highlighted the new child allowance and tuition-free high schools as his Cabinet’s achievements, DPJ members were quick to move on and look toward the party’s future.
DPJ Lower House member Hajime Ishii indicated that Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan is a strong contender to succeed Hatoyama, saying his party doesn’t “have much time” to look around. “There is no question that he is a candidate, since we need to make a quick decision,” the veteran lawmaker said.
But Ishii, who also serves as the DPJ’s election campaign chief, expressed concern over how Hatoyama’s resignation will affect July’s Upper House election. “I’ve always said that changing the cover of a book doesn’t have much effect” on voters, he said.
DPJ Upper House member Koji Matsui, who serves as deputy chief Cabinet secretary, said the time is now right for his party to “regain what it once had, change from within and reform itself.”
Meanwhile, other DPJ members were left in shock about Wednesday’s abrupt announcement by Hatoyama.
“I saw the breaking news alert on television, but it could be a false report,” one DPJ lawmaker said heading into the general meeting of party members. “But a plenary session of the Upper House was canceled, which is a sign that there will be a big announcement.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Hatoyama’s decision was “extremely regrettable,” but added that the government will remain composed and fulfill its duties until a successor administration is installed.
Hirano, who served as a key figure in negotiating the relocation of the Futenma base, said he “felt a sense of responsibility” over Hatoyama’s exit.
Health minister Akira Nagatsuma also expressed regret over the development, saying any prime minister should remain on the job for a certain period to properly govern the state.
“It’s regrettable, but the party must build a strong structure,” Nagatsuma said.
Opposition parties meanwhile were swift to criticize Hatoyama’s move.
“The resignation of the prime minister is merely like changing the costumes in order to trick the public,” Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tadamori Oshima told reporters. Opposition parties were already moving forward to submit a no-confidence motion and a nonbinding censure motion at the Diet.
“We will seek to have the Lower House dissolved now,” Oshima said.
But following his speech at the party meeting, Hatoyama looked like a big weight had been removed from his shoulders.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060100426_pf.html
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigns
By Blaine Harden
Wednesday, June 2, 2010; A07
SEOUL — Having squandered a historic electoral mandate in less than a year, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned Wednesday, leaving his Democratic Party of Japan without a leader before a pivotal July election.
The kingmaker of the ruling party, veteran politician Ichiro Ozawa, also quit Wednesday, after his ties to fundraising scandals had soured voters on the DPJ’s leadership. Sometimes called the “Shadow Shogun,” Ozawa was the political mastermind behind a landslide victory that last August ended nearly half a century of one-party rule in Japan, when the DPJ trounced the Liberal Democratic Party and Hatoyama took control of the government.
Hatoyama’s popularity collapsed, in large measure, because he could not make up his mind. He spent months sending contradictory signals — to Japanese voters and to the Obama administration — over where to put a noisy U.S. Marine airbase on the southern island of Okinawa.
His final decision, which came Friday, pleased the Americans, keeping the Marines and their howling helicopters on the crowded island. But it enraged Okinawans and left most Japanese voters with the impression that Hatoyama was an incompetent and vacillating leader.
“It is unfortunate that people have come gradually to not listen [to my government] and I realize that I am to blame,” Hatoyama said, in announcing his resignation at a meeting of party leaders.
Polls in recent days have shown that support for his government had fallen to 17 percent. A small party — a key to his party’s control of the upper house of parliament — abandoned Hatoyama’s ruling coalition over the weekend.
Hatoyama blamed his handling of the Okinawa issue for his failure as prime minister. But he insisted that Japan needs a strong security relationship with the United States and said that his decision to keep the U.S. base was in the country’s best interest.
“I hope you understand my pained grief that we must sustain trust between Japan and the United States,” he said, noting that the March sinking of a South Korean warship, apparently by North Korea, shows that “security has not been secured in Northeast Asia.”
At some point in the distant future, Hatoyama said, Japan will not need the security umbrella provided by the United States, nor will it have to accommodate the “burden” of hosting tens of thousands of Americans troops. But he said that “is not possible in my era” to secure regional peace without Japan’s partnership with the United States.
When his party won power last year, Hatoyama and the DPJ had insisted that Japan needed to assert more independence from the U.S. government in shaping its foreign policy. His resignation — at a time when North Korea’s unpredictable threat appears to be growing and China’s military power is expanding — suggests that a new Japanese leader will not similarly test the country’s security alliance with Washington.
Hatoyama, a wealthy man and the grandson of a former prime minister, said that his popularity and the support for his party were also undone by the issue of money. He had been linked to financial improprieties in fundraising activities by an aide.
“We strove to bring about politics that is clean,” he said. “But it turned out that I had a former secretary that had violated the law . . . I am very sorry for creating great trouble to everyone, and for forcing the public to come to terms with why the head of the clean Democratic Party of Japan was involved in such issue.”
Money in politics also led to Ozawa’s decision to quit, Hatoyama said. “Everyone knows this issue lies with Ozawa, too,” Hatoyama said. “I consulted with him and said to him, ‘I will resign, and I would like you to resign, too, to make our party clean.’ Ozawa said he understood.”
Hatoyama’s unusual frankness — especially in the murky context of Japanese politics — won a standing ovation from his audience of DPJ lawmakers, many of whom have been demanding in recent days that he quit. Political commentators were also astounded — and impressed — by the candidness of Hatoyama’s remarks.
Thanks to last year’s election win, the DPJ holds a commanding majority in the lower house of parliament, the body that chooses the prime minister and has the greatest say in controlling the government.
But analysts say that the DPJ may lose ground in the July 11 election for the upper house, which could cripple the party’s capacity to pass laws.
Hatoyama, 63, was never a natural politician. Stiff and shy, he has a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University and has said that he spent many hours there wondering what it was that made him avoid human relationships. After he entered politics in the 1980s, his faraway look, an eccentric manner and wooden style of speaking caused him to be nicknamed “the alien” by the press and even by some of his political supporters.
In announcing Tuesday that he was quitting, Hatoyama referred to his odd reputation — but suggested he was merely looking further into the future than more conventional politicians.
“People call me alien but my understanding is that I seem that way because I am talking about Japan in five, 10, 20 years,” he said.
Hatoyama won his party’s nod as prime minister because the DPJ’s longtime leader, Ozawa, had seen his popularity collapse due to questions over his fundraising activities.
In a sense, Hatoyama was a kind of placeholder for Ozawa, who continued to work in background as the party’s chief political strategist. There had been widespread speculation that at some point Ozawa might take over from Hatoyama, but that talk ended when new fundraising abuses were linked to Ozawa and his perceived electability collapsed.
Analysts and diplomats predicted that Finance Minister Naoto Kan could succeed Hatoyama. On a trip to the United States in April, Kan laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery — a visit that one senior diplomat described as a “campaign stop.”
Correspondent John Pomfret in Beijing and special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto in Tokyo contributed to this report.
