Prime Minister Naoto Kan, facing a
no-confidence vote in parliament, said Thursday he will consider
resigning once Japan's efforts to recover from its earthquake and
tsunami disaster take firm hold.
Kan told members of his party
that he felt responsible for carrying through with leading the
recovery. He made the comments ahead of a no-confidence vote in
parliament submitted by the opposition that has deeply split his ruling
party.
"Once the post-quake reconstruction efforts are settled, I
will pass on my responsibility to younger generations," he said. "The
nuclear crisis is ongoing, and I will make my utmost efforts to end the
crisis and move forward with post-quake reconstruction works."
Kan,
who became prime minister just a year ago, has been criticized for
delays in construction of temporary housing for evacuees from the March
11 disaster, lack of transparency about evacuation information, and a
perceived lack of leadership.
On Wednesday, the largest
opposition group, the Liberal Democratic Party, submitted the
no-confidence motion along with two smaller opposition groups.
Although
his Democratic Party of Japan controls the powerful lower house of
parliament, where the no-confidence motion was submitted, dozens of
ruling party lawmakers have expressed concern with his leadership,
creating a deep rift.
The motion and the ruling party split have
further complicated Kan's efforts to unite the government behind his
reconstruction plans, which involve a huge injection of funds and
possibly tax increases.
The magnitude 9.0 quake and the massive
tsunami that followed damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant,
causing the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, and left
24,000 people are dead or missing. Another 80,000 residents have been
forced to evacuate towns contaminated by the radiation-leaking plant.
In
the 1990s, Kan was a crusading health minister who stood up to his own
bureaucracy to lift the lid on a horrific AIDS scandal, but he was seen
as an uninspiring prime minister even before the earthquake with a
popularity rating below 20 percent.
He emerged as prime minister
last June only after other leaders of his Democratic Party fell. He
already is Japan's fifth leader in four years. AP
