[1]Japan’s Parliament installed Naoto Kan as the new Prime Minister on Friday, handing the outspoken populist the job of rallying his party and reclaiming its mandate for change ahead of elections next month.
Mr Kan, a 63-year-old veteran with a reputation for confronting Japan’s powerful bureaucrats, succeeds Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down on Wednesday after squandering the public’s high hopes with broken campaign promises and financial scandals.
“My task is to rebuild this nation,” said Mr Kan, who served as Mr Hatoyama’s finance minister.
He must now contend with a daunting list of problems. The world’s No. 2 economy is burdened with the largest public debt in the industrialised world, sluggish growth and an ageing, shrinking population.
But more urgently, with Upper House elections looming in July, he will need to convince voters of his party’s competence after they were disappointed by Mr Hatoyama’s financial scandals and bungled handling of the relocation of a US marine base in Okinawa.
Mr Kan’s first task will be to form a Cabinet — whose members he said he would announce “early next week” after thinking about the posts over the weekend.
“We will work together as one in the face of the tough political situation and the upcoming Upper House elections and fight together unified,” he told party members. “Our first priority is to regain the trust of the people.”
Mr Kan, the country’s sixth Prime Minister in four years, pledged to confront problems linking money and politics. He also stressed the need for fiscal discipline while trying to spur economic growth.
Chosen on Friday morning as new chief of the Democratic Party of Japan, Mr Kan was voted into office a few hours later by the Lower House, the more powerful chamber of Japan’s Parliament. Mr Kan received 313 votes out of 477.
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