By Hu Xuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-23 22:37

The bespectacled Fukuda, almost overcome with emotion, bowed to applause from LDP lawmakers and officials when the result of the vote was announced at the party's Tokyo headquarters.

“I'm not highly educated or talented, and I don't have much experience,” said Fukuda.

“But despite that, you have chosen me as party president. I am moved,” he said, with traditional Japanese humility.

Fukuda won a solid 330 of the 527 valid votes cast against 197 for outspoken rival Aso, a hawkish former foreign minister.

“The LDP must resolve to be reborn and obtain the people's trust,” Fukuda told a news conference, adding he wanted to hold policy talks with opposition leaders.

Fukuda also faces conflicting pressures to spend more to woo disaffected voters while reining in Japan's mammoth public debt.

The split in parliament has raised fears of a policy deadlock just as Japan needs action on pensions and tax reform in the face of a wave of retiring baby boomers.

Fans of Fukuda, chief cabinet secretary under Abe's predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, say his consensual style will be welcome after Koizumi's five years of combative reforms and 12 months of scandals and upsets under Abe.

“Safety, security and stability -- these are the things that many in the LDP are hoping for from Fukuda,” said Takehiko Yamamoto, political science professor at Waseda University.

Agencies contributed to the story

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