Tokyo, May 30: Japan’s embattled Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama says he wants to maintain the ruling coalition with the Social Democrats amid a row over the relocation of a US airbase.
On Friday, Hatoyama sacked Consumer Affairs Minister Mizuho Fukushima after she refused to endorse a deal with Washington to keep a US airbase on the southern Okinawa Island.
While Hatoyama’s Democratic Party is on the verge of internal dispute over the issue, Fukushima’s removal from her cabinet post further convinced her leftist Social Democratic Party (SDP) to leave the government.
“I would like to maintain the ruling coalition. But it is up to the SPD to decide,” Hatoyama said on Saturday in the South Korean island of Jeju, where he was to attend a regional summit with leaders from China and South Korea.
The premier urged SDP leaders to continue their cooperation with the government and revise a decision to quit.
Hatoyama owed his sweeping victory in the last year election largely to raising hopes that the US Futenma base could be moved off Okinawa, a campaign promise he later gave up.
The airbase deal has sparked anger among Okinawa residents and jeopardized the country’s coalition government before the parliamentary elections in July.
An SPD departure would not topple the government thanks to a huge majority Hatoyama’s Democratic Party enjoys in the more influential lower house, but would shake the ruling coalition ahead of the upper house election.
Hatoyama admitted to the need to find a permanent replacement for the consumer affairs minister’s post, but said that he had no plan at the moment to reshuffle the cabinet.
——-Agencies