PRIME MINISTER Naoto Kan has told his cabinet that he will step down and dissolve Japan’s government next week, signalling another turn of the country’s political merry-go-round. Analysts say the country will have a new leader by Tuesday.
Mr Kan has tied his resignation to the passage of key legislation that would compel the nation’s utilities to buy renewable energies, including solar and wind power.
Japan’s lower house cleared the two Bills yesterday and the upper house is expected to pass them on Friday, officially kick-starting the leadership race.
The prime minister has, politically speaking, been a dead man walking since June, when he survived a no-confidence motion in his government by promising to quit. In the summer he became the first Japanese prime minister in five years to last more than 12 months.
Candidates in the ruling Democrats have already begun jockeying for the position of party leader, which will fall vacant when Mr Kan quits.
The frontrunner is the popular former foreign minister Seiji Maehara (49), who announced yesterday that he will run.
Mr Kan has been accused of fumbling his government’s response to Japan’s worst natural crisis since the second World War, sparked by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.
The crisis has been exacerbated by the nearly six-month battle to bring the leaking nuclear power plant in Fukushima under control. Polls put his support rate at below the critical 20 per cent mark.
The prime minister stunned his party last month when he pledged a nuclear-free future for the country, a position that immediately put him at odds with party conservatives and the nation’s powerful business lobby.
Mr Kan later said he was expressing a personal opinion, not party policy.
His successor, the nation’s sixth prime minister in four years, will have to deal with a formidable list of problems, including the rising yen, which has hit record highs against the dollar and hurt the profitability of Japan’s export giants.
Tens of thousands of people are still homeless from the March disaster and 80,000 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters from around the Fukushima plant.
The left-of-centre Democrats ended over half a century of almost continuous conservative rule two years ago, promising radical political change. But many voters have been disappointed by back-peddling on its key pledges, including a major shift in spending on education, health and welfare.