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Japanese Prime Minister may resign ’within 48 hours’

01 June 2010 17:35 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama may step down within the next 48 hours amid growing public and political resentment at his handling of the relocation of a US Marines Corps base in Okinawa, APA reports quoting telegraph.co.uk website.
Mr Hatoyama is scheduled to have showdown talks with Ichiro Ozawa, the secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, on Tuesday evening.
Mr Ozawa is widely considered to be the party’s kingmaker and the meeting may well determine the prime minister’s political fate.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Hatoyama said he was willing to stay on as prime minister, despite growing criticism within the ruling party of his failure to reach and stick to decisions on key issues.
"By holding discussions with Secretary General Ozawa and cooperating with him, I will stand up against this national crisis," Mr Hatoyama said.
"What matters is people’s livelihoods.
"This administration was set up to substantially change policies and I want to continue acting in a way that fits this administration."
Elected with a huge majority in August, Mr Hatoyama’s initial public support ratings of 75 percent have dwindled to 19 percent in a survey by the Yomiuri newspaper over the weekend.
That figure stands at a mere eight percent in Okinawa, which is at the centre of the political crisis.
On Friday, Mr Hatoyama announced that he would not be able to keep his pre-election promise to move the US Marines’ Futenma Air Station out of Okinawa and that he was reverting to an earlier plan to shift it to a reclaimed site on the north-east coast of the island.
He then fired Mizuho Fukushima, minister of consumer affairs and head of the coalition’s Social Democratic Party, after she refused to go along with the plan.
The SDP reacted angrily, with deputy chief Seiji Mataichi saying Mr Hatoyama is "incoherent and not qualified to be a head of state as he has lost his perspective."
The minority party in the coalition will find it difficult to cooperate with the DPJ in the election for the Upper House, scheduled for July 11.
DPJ members of the house have begun to agitate for Mr Hatoyama to step down ahead of the vote to give the party a chance to recover.
That tactic is apparently favoured by some senior mambers of the party, with Azuma Koshiishi, chair of the DPJ’s Upper House caucus, reportedly telling Mr Hatoyama that "circumstances have turned against the DPJ ahead of the election," a thinly veiled suggestion that he step down.
Mr Koshiishi met with colleagues on Monday afternoon and it is believed that the party would turn to finance minister Naoto Kan as its next leader.