Mori's real battle lies after polls
By Shino Yuasa
TOKYO (AFP): Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's real political battle may lie after Sunday's elections, when his party decides whether his loose tongue will cost him his job.
Heavyweight members of the faction-ridden Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are waiting in the wings to take the stocky 62-year- old leader's place if needed, analysts say.
"The writing may well be on the wall for Mori, whatever the election outcome," Lehman Brothers' chief economist for Asia, Russell Jones, said in a recent report.
Mori's popularity had slumped since May 15 when he described Japan as "God's country, centered on the emperor," harking back to the now-taboo wartime belief that the emperor was a living god.
He capped that on Tuesday by telling wavering voters -- an estimated 40 percent of the electorate -- to stay in bed on election day. A higher turnout rate generally helps the opposition.
Overall, since taking over after late prime minister Keizo Obuchi suffered a massive stroke on April 2, which led to his death after six weeks in a coma, Mori has failed to impress.
"The main problem facing the faction-ridden LDP will not be deciding to ditch Mori but determining his successor," said the Lehman Brothers report.
Key candidates tipped by analysts for the top job are:
* Foreign Minister Yohei Kono. A good choice to host the July 21-23 Group of Eight summit and a front-runner according to most pundits. But he lacks a strong support base in the LDP.
* Koichi Kato. A former LDP secretary-general considered a serious advocate of fiscal reform. He is highly critical, however, of the Buddhist-backed Komeito party, which is a coalition ally.
* Ryutaro Hashimoto, a former prime minister with nominal support from the Obuchi faction. But he is blamed by many for exacerbating Japan's economic ills by raising taxes in the midst of a downturn.
* Other candidates include LDP members such as Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who has had the job before but is unlikely to get it again, because he is 80 years old.
Most analysts say the battle will be between Foreign Minister Kono and the reformer, Kato.
LDP secretary general Hiromu Nonaka, now considered a key mover within the party, following the death this month of the behind-the-scenes LDP kingmaker Noboru Takeshita, is likely to have a big say.
And Nonaka is expected to support the foreign minister, making him most experts' favorite.
Kato ran unsuccessfully against the late prime minister Obuchi for the LDP's leadership -- which almost automatically leads to the prime ministership -- in September 1999.
Within the LDP, which has held power with just one 10-month break since its formation 1955, reformists and traditionalists are pitted against each other in the succession fight, experts say.
"The magma of the political power struggle between reformists and mainstreamers is already rumbling within the party," said Hitotsubashi University political science prof. Tetsuro Kato.
And if the LDP loses its own majority in the lower house of parliament, he forecast, "the magma will explode so as to bring Mori down from power."
The LDP held 271 lower house seats in the last parliament, when the chamber had a total 500 seats before legislative reforms reduced the number for these elections.