Courtesy of Asian Correspondent:

Japan’s parliament elected outspoken populist Naoto Kan as prime minister, handing the political veteran the immediate task of rallying his party and reclaiming its mandate for change before elections next month.

Kan succeeds Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down on after squandering the public’s high hopes with broken campaign promises, including moving a US Marine base off Okinawa island, and financial scandals.

Kan, the country’s sixth prime minister in four years, pledged to confront problems linking money and politics.

“My task as the leader of DPJ is to rebuild this nation as prime minister. We will work together as one in the face of the tough political situation and the upcoming upper house election and fight together unified.”

“I think we can bring back Japan onto more suitable economic path by studying how to put our fiscal policy into more efficient one and by securing the necessary financial resources for that.”

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“Japan is situated at a very advantageousness geopolitical position. Asia is currently the most rapidly and widely developing area in the world and its scale (of the development) is the most outstanding in history. Japan locates at the corner of such area. It is true that the situation on development in Japan and in Asia is different, Japan is still at the position to be able to strike a win-win relationship with such developing powers such as China, India and Vietnam.”

The 63-year-old with a reputation for confronting Japan’s powerful bureaucrats must 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 aging population.

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