WUNRN
By
Julian Ryall in Tokyo
08 September 2008
Japan's
first female defence minister has announced her intention to take on the
"old boys" of the country's ruling Liberal Democratic Party to become
prime minister.
Yuriko Koike, a former television news presenter, launched her campaign with a promise to rejuvenate the world's second-largest economy if she is selected to replace Yasuo Fukuda, who resigned last week after just a year in office.
She is the first woman to seek the leadership of the LDP, which has seen its popularity eroded after five decades of near continuous rule.
She faces stiff competition from three other candidates, including front-runner and flamboyant party secretary General Taro Aso, for the party vote on September 22.
A general election will be held by September next year, although the opposition has called for a snap election as soon as possible.
Koike said that the keyword of her campaign would be "reform" and said she intends to introduce an environmental tax to fight global warming.
Announcing her bid at the LDP headquarters, she said: "I have received the enthusiastic support of my colleagues.
"In order to break through the deadlock facing Japanese society, I believe the country might as well have a female candidate."
The 51-year-old is something of an anomaly in Japanese politics.
The foreign policy expert, who is fluent in English and Arabic, has expressed her admiration for both Margaret Thatcher and Hilary Clinton.
She was one of the "assassins" hand-picked by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ahead of the 2005 election to challenge seats held by his party opponents and inherited the immensely-popular premier's zeal to stamp out the back-room deals that have been struck by previous generations of Japanese politicians.
"I met Mrs. Thatcher in Japan when she was still prime minister of England and I have to say that I was inspired by her," she told The Daily Telegraph recently.
"I have also met Hillary twice and the impression I had of both of them was that they were ready and prepared to lead their countries.
"The system and society in Japan are obviously quite different from Britain and the US, which means that to be a female minister - or even a woman legislator - we need to have additional skills to enable us to work together with our male counterparts.
"One of the things that I hated the most when I was a minister is that when a male minister makes a mistake, he is not strongly criticised for what has gone wrong. "But if a woman minister makes a mistake, even her colleagues would accuse her, simply because she is a woman. Or if she happens to do a good job, then it is often said that she only managed to achieve it because she had assistance from someone else.
"Change is not happening fast enough for women, either in Japanese society or our political world," she said.
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