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Japanese premier Yukio Hatoyama resigns; fourth PM to quit within 1st year

02 June 2010 04:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who ended five decades of single-party rule when he swept to power in August but stumbled when he confronted the country’s longtime ally, the United States, resigned Wednesday, APA reports quoting The Washington Post.
Hatoyama quit at a meeting of leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan, becoming the fourth straight Japanese leader to leave after a year or less in office.
"Since last year’s elections, I tried to change politics in which the people of Japan would be the main characters," he said later Wednesday at a nationally broadcast news conference. But he conceded that his efforts weren’t understood. "That’s mainly because of my failings," he said.
Hatoyama ran for the premiership on a campaign platform of maintaining a more equal relationship with the United States, which still enjoys enormous support among most Japanese. His decision to challenge Washington over the details of a massive military base relocation plan on the island of Okinawa befuddled Japanese and American analysts and government officials alike.
Hatoyama also called for Japan to become more of an "Asian nation," which sparked concern in Washington that he wanted to move Japan away from its pro-U.S. stance and closer to China.
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 Unknown Solder at Arlington National Cemetery -- a visit that one senior diplomat described as a "campaign stop."
Hatoyama’s resignation came just eight months after his party won an historic election ousting the Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated Japanese politics for almost half a century.
Still, his exit was widely predicted. Public support for Hatoyama had dropped precipitously as he stumbled to handle Japan’s economy and its foreign relations -- especially its relations with the United States.
He opposed moving the Futenma U.S. Marine Corps airbase from a populated part of Okinawa to a more isolated part of the island saying that he would prefer it if the Marines left Okinawa altogether. But he never came up with a different solution. And after months of battling with the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, during which U.S. officials, including President Obama, questioned his trustworthiness to his face, Hatoyama finally gave in two weeks ago.
In the past few days, Hatoyama’s comrades in the Democratic Party of Japan have begun to openly call for him to step down in a bid to revive the party’s fortunes. Those fortunes were weakened recently with the recent departure of a leftist party from its ruling coalition. The leftists had opposed any U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
In addition to the nervousness it created in Washington, the DPJ is facing a tricky economic situation at home. It needs to devise a way to cut Japan’s enormous public debt and at the same time figure out a way to grow the economy despite one of the fastest aging populations in the world.