日本在留资格|日本再现“短命首相”(有声)

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Let"s hear more, now, about Japan"s prime minister who is resigning after just eight months in office. He faced a lot of problems, but the biggest one was the American military presence on the island of Okinawa. He promised to move the base - and didn"t. Lucy Kraft reports from Tokyo.

Prime Minister YUKIO HATOYAMA: (Foreign language spoken)

LUCY KRAFT: In a short and emotion speech, 63-year-old Yukio Hatoyama told members of his Democratic Party what most of them wanted to hear - that he was stepping down. Branded as indecisive and incompetent, Hatoyama was quickly characterized as a spoiled aristocrat who was out of touch with reality. Hatoyama set a record for squandered political capital.

He took the reins last fall, after his party won in a landslide that gave him a whopping 70 percent support rate. After Japan"s decades of one-party rule, Hatoyama"s Democrats promised transparent and responsive and government. These promises were enshrined in a slick platform known as the manifesto.

But disillusionment quickly set in as Hatoyama was forced to break one campaign promise after another. Hatoyama"s Waterloo was on the southern island of Okinawa. Perennially frustrated by noise, pollution and crime problems with U.S. military installations, but ignored by generations of conservative governments in Tokyo, Okinawans were energized by Hatoyama"s pledges to move an American Air Station off their island.

When Hatoyama announced, after months of delay, that this promise would be broken, too, it was the last straw for voters. As Hatoyama"s support tumbled to below 20 percent, his party members began to panic.

The prime minister"s imminent departure seemed to surprise few voters across Japan.

Unidentified Woman #1: (Foreign language spoken)

KRAFT: You can"t trust him, says this woman in a television interview. He should"ve resigned sooner.

Unidentified Woman #2: (Foreign language spoken)

KRAFT: His cabinet was like a government of children, said another woman on the same program.

Japan"s center left Democrats are now rushing to hold an interparty election, which is set to choose a new prime minister on Friday. The front runner is finance minister Naoto Kan, a veteran politician and crusader on health issues. But even after the prime minister"s seat is filled, Japan"s leadership crisis is likely to linger on.

National parliamentary elections will be held in July, and for many Japanese, like this TV commentator, Hatoyama"s fall has tainted every member of this party.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

KRAFT: Hatoyama has brought into question the competence of the entire party, he says. It will be hard for the Democrats to regain public trust.

Hatoyama"s dramatic rise and fall has once again thrown the U.S. base issue and the U.S. Japan security relationship into limbo, with the Pentagon demanding Japan adhere to a 2006 base agreement to keep the Futenma airbase on Okinawa and Okinawans just as adamant that the base be moved somewhere else in Japan. No obvious compromises are apparent.

However inept, Hatoyama"s performance as prime minister, many observers say, his administration was needlessly undercut by Washington. Observers criticize the U.S. for taking a hard line with Japan, a country which recently celebrated a 50 year security alliance with the U.S. and which hosts the largest U.S. military base in Asia.

Even if the democrats prevail in this summer"s election, the interim prime minister is expected to serve only a few more months and a new leader could be chosen in September.

For NPR News, this is Lucy Kraft in Tokyo.

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