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| Sunday, 05 March 2006 |
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Leader of Japan's junior coalition party to step down TOKYO, March 4 (AFP) - The head of a junior political partner in the Japanese ruling coalition government will step down in October, media reports said Saturday. Takenori Kanzaki, leader of New Komeito Japan's third largest party backed by a major Buddhist sect, will not run in party presidential elections in October and step down from the post, Kyodo News said citing party sources. Kanzaki, 62, has served as the party chief since 1998. Akihiro Ota, the party's acting secretary general, and land minister Kazuo Kitagawa have been considered major candidates after Kanzaki, the news agency said. Party officials were not immediately reached. The New Komeito joined the ruling bloc in 1999 under the leadership of Kanzaki. But its influence in the coalition has weakened particularly after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) swept last year's House of Representatives election with a landslide victory. New Komeito, a pacifist party, has failed to affect the LDP's increasingly hard-line policies, such as a plan to upgrade the defense agency to the defense ministry, drawing criticism from some of its younger members. The party is intimately linked to the Soka Gakkai Buddhist sect, which
counts 8.21 million households in Japan and 1.5 million people elsewhere as
followers, including the US singer Tina Turner. |
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