Mori faces cabinet cold shoulder

Mori arrives for the upper house plenary session in the Diet

TOKYO, Japan -- Japan's unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has got another nudge toward the door from one possible successor in his own cabinet.

"There is an extremely cold wind blowing," former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, now a minister in Mori's cabinet, told a news conference on Tuesday, referring to Mori's slender public support.

A newspaper report Tuesday said leaders in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partners have decided unpopular Mori is to step down in early April, when budget-related bills will be enacted.

But persistent pressure means Mori could be forced to state his intention to bow out at a LDP convention on March 13 -- a scenario that Hashimoto may have had in mind when he said: "The LDP must consider how to handle the convention in view of such opinions."

Public support historically low

A fresh batch of public opinion polls released on Tuesday was a timely reminder that Mori, under fire for a string of gaffes and scandals, is already one of the nation's most unpopular leaders ever.

Public support for his 10-month-old cabinet plummeted 10.6 points to a slender 8.6 percent in a weekend poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper -- just a hair's breadth higher than the eight percent posted by the late Noboru Takeshita shortly before he resigned over the Recruit shares-for-favors scandal in 1989.

It was the second-lowest rating for a prime minister since the paper started conducting such surveys in 1978.

"The people of this nation now cast an eye as cold as ice on the administration of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori," Yomiuri said.

Another poll conducted by Sankei Shimbun newspaper and Fuji Television found Mori's support down 11.3 points at 6.9 percent.

Perhaps most troubling for Mori's long-dominant LDP, some 44 percent of respondents said they prefer to see a new coalition without the LDP in charge, the Sankei survey showed.

With the Upper House election just five months away, such numbers have ruling coalition lawmakers shaking in their boots.

A defeat would not immediately oust the ruling camp but could set the stage for deadlock and prompt an early Lower House election, which is not mandated until 2004.

Speculation over when Mori might step down had focused on the adoption of the budget for the next fiscal year from April by parliament's powerful Lower House, expected on Friday.

Passage of the budget by the lower chamber ensures its enactment even without a vote by the Upper House, and could be seen as depriving Mori of his excuse for lingering.

Successor uncertain

There is no shortage of names being floated as possible candidates as Japan's next prime minister.

Among them are LDP elder Hiromu Nonaka, one of a "Gang of Four" who tapped Mori for premier in a closed-door deal last April; reform-minded Junichiro Koizumi who heads Mori's own LDP faction; and Hashimoto himself.

Each has problems, however, either in terms of image or factional power struggles within the LDP, while the party's ruling partners, the New Komeito and the tiny New Conservative Party, also want to have a say.

None are believed to be keen to take a post they could be forced to relinquish less than half a year later if, as many predict, the coalition takes a bashing in the Upper House election.

The shortage of willing sacrificial lambs has some politicians even muttering that Mori could last until July.

Sankei's survey showed Koizumi topped the list of those thought likely to become next prime minister, with 17.4 percent.

But when voters were asked whom they preferred for the job, Makiko Tanaka, outspoken daughter of late LDP kingmaker Kakuei Tanaka, surpassed Koizumi with 13.5 percent to his 8.7 percent.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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