March 7 (Bloomberg) ¡ª Prime Minister Naoto Kan¡¯s battle to fund Japan¡¯s budget and avoid early elections suffered another blow as his foreign minister quit over an illegal donation and a poll showed fewer than one voter in four supports him.Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, 48, resigned late yesterday after admitting he had received 250,000 yen ($3,038) since 2005 from a South Korean national in Japan he has known since childhood. The ruling party was already hit by former leader Ichiro Ozawa¡¯s indictment on unrelated charges of vibram five fingers Shoes violating campaign financing laws, which also ban foreign contributions.Kan has failed to persuade the opposition to authorize 44.3 trillion yen in government bonds to finance the budget and faces dissent in his Democratic Party over a push to raise the sales tax to cope with soaring debt costs. The stalemate has increased the possibility Kan will have to step down, becoming the fifth straight premier to last no more than a year.
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¡±The Kan administration is facing an enormous crisis,¡± said
Minoru Morita, a Tokyo-based independent political analyst.
¡°He¡¯ll have to quickly appoint Maehara¡¯s successor and work on
budget-related bills to postpone the timing of resignation or
election.¡±Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano will take on
Maehara¡¯s portfolio temporarily, Kan said today in parliament.
Edano later told reporters a permanent replacement would be found
¡°soon.¡±Opposition lawmakers had called for Maehara to step down
for accepting money from a foreign national. Thousands of ethnic
Koreans who have Vibram Five Fingers Classic lived in Japan their
entire lives do not hold Japanese citizenship.The DPJ in September
2009 unseated the Liberal Democratic Party from more than half a
century of almost unbroken power, pledging to avoid the corruption
that tainted several LDP governments. Nine months later, Kan¡¯s
predecessor Yukio Hatoyama was forced to step down partly due to a
finance scandal.In January, former DPJ leader and top party
strategist Ozawa was indicted in a case that has led to the trial
of three of his former aides.
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