Tokyo: Top executives of Japan`s new ruling party were expected to sign off on their leader`s choices for key cabinet posts on Monday, a week after the Democratic Party`s landslide victory in a national election.
Japanese media have reported that Hirohisa Fujii, 77, would probably be chosen to return as finance minister in Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama`s cabinet -- a role he held briefly in the early 1990s.
But it was unclear whether the choice would be finalized before Hatoyama, who will take office on September 16, cements a proposed coalition with tiny parties whose cooperation is needed to control parliament`s upper house.
The huge election win by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended half a century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and breaks a deadlock in Parliament, ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut waste and reduce the power of bureaucrats.
But some analysts worry that the Democrats` spending plans could inflate a public debt already about 170 percent of GDP, the highest among advanced countries.
Fujii, who served as finance minister in an anti-LDP coalition from 1993-1994, told Reuters last week that Tokyo must not intervene in the foreign exchange markets to curb the yen`s rise unless currency rates moves abnormally and that a strong yen was good for Japan as it curbs import costs.
Hatoyama said on Saturday that he would tap Naoto Kan, a 62-year-old former health minister, to head a powerful new agency to oversee the budget process and set policy priorities.
Hatoyama also said Katsuya Okada, 56, would become foreign minister, a post being closely watched in Washington because of concerns about the U.S.-Japan alliance after his party has vowed a more independent diplomatic course.
The new National Strategy Bureau, to include both public and private sector officials, will be tasked with reforming what the Democrats say is a cumbersome policy-making system that had relied heavily on recommendations from bureaucrats and allowed the ruling party to compete with the cabinet on decisions.
Kan`s experience battling bureaucrats to expose a cover-up of HIV-tainted blood products when he was health minister in 1996 could stand him in good stead, but analysts say he will also need to find a way to cooperate with elite ministry officials.
Japanese media said Kan would also hold the post of party policy chief, thus centralizing decisions inside the cabinet.
"If the party`s policy chief will also serve as the minister in charge of the National Strategic Bureau, that will be the center of policy-making," Hatoyama said on Friday.
Talks with two tiny potential coalition partners have been proceeding in parallel with Hatoyama`s personnel moves.
Despite their huge election win in parliament`s powerful lower house, the Democrats need the cooperation of the Social Democrats and the conservative People`s New Party to keep control of the upper chamber to ensure laws are enacted smoothly.
Bureau Report
