Japan PM faces backlash after surviving challenge

TOKYO: Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan faced a backlash on Friday for saying he would quit once recovery from the nation's quake disaster takes hold but then suggesting he wants to stay until next year.

Kan survived an opposition sponsored no-confidence motion Thursday that some rebel members of his own party had threatened to support, after Kan appeased his enemies by promising to leave the scene but without specifying a date.

Asked in a late-night press conference Thursday when the disaster recovery will have reached the point where he would agree to bow out, Kan mentioned the stabilisation of the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power has said it hopes to bring all reactors to stable "cold shutdown" between October and January, but its recent confirmation of partial fuel meltdowns has threatened to delay that goal.

Some political commentators saw Kan's move as a clever ploy allowing him to live another day, but most decried the manoeuvre as a gambit that left Japan with a lame duck leader as it tackles its worst post-war crisis.

"It is irresponsible for him to stay in power at half-steam," the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun said in an editorial.

"In order to prevent a political breakdown, he should shorten the period until he resigns by as much as possible."

The conservative opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- which tried to oust Kan, arguing that he has bungled the March 11 disaster recovery and the handling of the nuclear crisis -- has reacted furiously to its defeat.

"If you quit, quit now," said Tadamori Oshima, a senior LDP lawmaker.

The anger was shared by many inside Kan's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a broad centre-left grouping that ousted the LDP in a landslide in 2009 but has since then limped along under two unpopular prime ministers.

Its first premier Yukio Hatoyama -- who survived less than nine months in the post and who is now among Kan's harshest critics -- on Thursday said that Kan should resign from his post as early as this summer.

Hatoyama had met Kan hours before the make-or-break parliamentary vote and later said he had extracted a promise from Kan to leave within months, in return for Hatoyama's support in defeating the motion.

Since then, Hatoyama has reacted angrily to Kan's vague comments on how long he wants to stay in power, bitterly telling reporters on Friday about Kan that "if he can't keep the promise, he is a cheat".

Other DPJ figures warned of the danger that tensions between the major parties could stall key legislation in the divided Diet legislature.

"If all bills come to a halt, there will be no choice but an honourable resignation" for Kan, said Hajime Ishii, DPJ vice president. "I will tell him that, even if it means putting my job on the line."

Many commentators have been dismayed by the political bickering at a time when Japan is struggling with the aftermath of its triple calamity.

About 100,000 people still live in shelters, awaiting temporary housing, after the March 11 disaster left more than 23,000 people dead and missing and sparked the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

The catastrophe plunged Japan back into recession, and the massive clean-up and reconstruction cost over the coming years will add to what is already the highest public debt mountain in the industrialised world.

"What lawmakers are urged to do is to achieve recovery and reconstruction at the earliest date," the Asahi said. "The Democratic Party of Japan should pick its new leader swiftly and proceed with policy discussions."

Among potential candidates to succeed Kan are Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda and the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, who has ties with the conservative opposition camp, the Asahi said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011