Japan PM rallies party to fight election gloom

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-18 19:05

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso tried to rally his fracturing party on Sunday ahead of an election this year it looks set to lose, vowing to turn around a worsening recession and win over disillusioned voters.

Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso makes a speech at the convention of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Tokyo January 18, 2009. [Agencies]

Aso, 68, is struggling to manage his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the face of newly confident opposition parties, who control parliament's upper house and have threatened to stall bills in a bid to force an early election.

The unpopular leader has ruled out a snap poll for now but an election must be held by October at the latest.

"Of all the parties out there, only the LDP can rightly deal with this economic crisis," Aso told an annual party convention, in which members sang to the party anthem and listened to a pep talk from an Olympic synchronized swimming medalist.

"I want to express my determination to take leadership and fight on," he said to applause.

An outspoken nationalist and fan of manga comic books, Aso was chosen by the LDP last September to woo a public frustrated with politics after two leaders quit suddenly in less than a year.

But with Aso's support ratings having fallen to below 20 percent, LDP lawmakers are increasingly worried that the party is poised to lose its more than half a century of near-unbroken rule.

In a sign of the party's fraying unity, ex-financial services minister Yoshimi Watanabe quit the party last week after his calls for an early election and other policy demands were ignored.

Analysts doubt many lawmakers will follow Watanabe for now, but more groups within the LDP are growing vocal in their criticism of Aso and his policies to fix the economy and the bureaucracy.

Tax Headache

LDP lawmakers last week weighed in against Aso's plan to include an addendum in the fiscal 2009/10 budget to increase the 5 percent consumption tax starting in 2011 if the economy recovers.

Economists have long said that the consumption tax should be raised to finance ballooning social security costs, but critics of a tax increase argue that specifying the timing for one now would further cool the economy.

"We need a consensus from the public first," former LDP secretary-general Hidenao Nakagawa, an opponent of a consumption tax increase, told reporters after the party convention.

"We didn't pledge in the last election that we would put down in law when the consumption tax would be raised."

More defections from the LDP would be fatal for Aso, whose ruling coalition needs a two-thirds majority vote in the lower house to pass budget-related bills in coming months rejected by the opposition-dominated upper house.

A group of young regional representatives at the LDP convention shook hands with a smiling Aso on stage and shouted pledges to win the next election, but others were less optimistic.

"No matter what we say or what we do, there's a sense that the media and public opinion are against us," said Takashige Okano, 30, a party member and a lawmaker's secretary.

"I talk to other party members and they've lost hope."