JAPAN:Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's prime minister, yesterday turned to Taro Aso, his rival for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and a popular former foreign minister, to help shore up his creaking administration in a sweeping reshuffle of the cabinet and LDP posts.
Mr Fukuda, who is struggling to lift support ratings that have sunk below 30 per cent as he prepares to fight a general election which must be held in the next year, also named new finance and economy ministers.
The reshuffle is seen as an attempt to address increasing voter unhappiness about the state of the economy and rising food and fuel prices.
Mr Fukuda appointed Mr Aso, a 67-year-old foreign policy hawk, to be LDP secretary general, a position he held under Shinzo Abe, the previous prime minister who quit last September. Experts said one of his responsibilities would be to negotiate the timing of the general election with New Komeito, the LDP's coalition partner, which has been agitating for an early poll.
"There's going to be a bloodletting," said Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian studies at Tokyo's Temple University.
The LDP, which was drubbed by the Democratic Party of Japan in elections for the upper house of parliament last year, "wants to put off the pain [of another election] as long as possible".
Mr Kingston said Mr Aso's hiring "sends the wrong message. He's one of the party's dinosaurs and a product of the machine."
Altogether Mr Fukuda replaced 13 of his 17 ministers, although many of the new appointees are familiar faces from previous administrations.
- (Financial Times service)