TOKYO, March 6 (AFP): Japan's centre-left government suffered a blow Sunday when its high-profile foreign minister reportedly said he would step down over a donations scandal that drew the ire of the conservative opposition. Seiji Maehara, 48, has been widely seen as a likely successor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has struggled in the face of support ratings below 20 percent and a split parliament that has threatened to derail his reform agenda.
The ambitious Maehara came into the firing line himself last week when he admitted he had accepted the equivalent of several hundred dollars in campaign donations in recent years from a Japanese-born woman of Korean ethnicity.
Under Japanese law, it is illegal for politicians to accept donations from a foreign national and the scandal has been all the more damaging to Maehara, who as foreign minister has taken a hawkish and strongly patriotic stance.
Maehara had been the most vocal cabinet minister in recent diplomatic battles Japan has fought with China and Russia over disputed territories, which are legacies of Japan's troubled wartime history with its neighbours.
After days of braving angry protests from conservative opposition politicians in the Diet legislature and on TV talk shows, Maehara on Sunday evening met with Kan to formally resign, Kyodo News and Jiji Press reported. Maehara later left Kan's office without speaking to reporters and there was no immediate news that Kan had accepted his resignation. Kan then met his right-hand man, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, for further talks.
For Kan -- the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) second premier since it ended half a century of conservative rule in a 2009 landslide -- the loss of a popular minister would compound serious political troubles. The opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has signalled high hopes of retaking the levers of power in Asia's second-largest economy and has challenged Kan to call a snap election which it thinks it would win.
The LDP and its allies have threatened to paralyse the Kan government by using their upper house majority to block bills to finance the record 1.1-trillion-dollar budget for the fiscal year starting April 1. This would threaten a government shutdown at a time when the DPJ is seeking to rejuvenate the five-trillion-dollar economy, whittle down massive public debt and implement policies to reinvigorate a graying population.
The troubled premier also faces a party revolt, with 16 of his own lawmakers, who are close to his DPJ nemesis, scandal-tainted faction boss Ichiro Ozawa, boycotting his government's vote for the budget last week. Kan is Japan's fifth premier in five years and many political and media commentators have predicted in recent weeks he may soon also go, continuing the country's damaging revolving-door leadership.
For Maehara -- a telegenic media-savvy politician once likened to Britain's Tony Blair -- the donations affair came as a sudden and damaging blow. He would be the first minister to resign since Kan reshuffled his cabinet in January.
Maehara, after graduating from Kyoto University in 1987, studied at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, a private institute that draws on an unorthodox curriculum to foster modern political leaders.
The ambitious Maehara came into the firing line himself last week when he admitted he had accepted the equivalent of several hundred dollars in campaign donations in recent years from a Japanese-born woman of Korean ethnicity.
Under Japanese law, it is illegal for politicians to accept donations from a foreign national and the scandal has been all the more damaging to Maehara, who as foreign minister has taken a hawkish and strongly patriotic stance.
Maehara had been the most vocal cabinet minister in recent diplomatic battles Japan has fought with China and Russia over disputed territories, which are legacies of Japan's troubled wartime history with its neighbours.
After days of braving angry protests from conservative opposition politicians in the Diet legislature and on TV talk shows, Maehara on Sunday evening met with Kan to formally resign, Kyodo News and Jiji Press reported. Maehara later left Kan's office without speaking to reporters and there was no immediate news that Kan had accepted his resignation. Kan then met his right-hand man, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, for further talks.
For Kan -- the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) second premier since it ended half a century of conservative rule in a 2009 landslide -- the loss of a popular minister would compound serious political troubles. The opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has signalled high hopes of retaking the levers of power in Asia's second-largest economy and has challenged Kan to call a snap election which it thinks it would win.
The LDP and its allies have threatened to paralyse the Kan government by using their upper house majority to block bills to finance the record 1.1-trillion-dollar budget for the fiscal year starting April 1. This would threaten a government shutdown at a time when the DPJ is seeking to rejuvenate the five-trillion-dollar economy, whittle down massive public debt and implement policies to reinvigorate a graying population.
The troubled premier also faces a party revolt, with 16 of his own lawmakers, who are close to his DPJ nemesis, scandal-tainted faction boss Ichiro Ozawa, boycotting his government's vote for the budget last week. Kan is Japan's fifth premier in five years and many political and media commentators have predicted in recent weeks he may soon also go, continuing the country's damaging revolving-door leadership.
For Maehara -- a telegenic media-savvy politician once likened to Britain's Tony Blair -- the donations affair came as a sudden and damaging blow. He would be the first minister to resign since Kan reshuffled his cabinet in January.
Maehara, after graduating from Kyoto University in 1987, studied at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, a private institute that draws on an unorthodox curriculum to foster modern political leaders.
