3 candidates formally enter leadership contest for opposition LDP

TOKYO, Sept. 18 Kyodo -
Three lawmakers submitted their candidacies Friday for the leadership election
later this month of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, setting the stage for a
three-way contest for the post to lead a party in need of renewal.
The Sept. 28 election will be fought between one veteran member -- former
Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki, 64 -- and two younger contestants -- former
Senior Vice Justice Minister Taro Kono, a fiery critic of the LDP leadership
run by old hands, and former Parliamentary Vice Foreign Minister Yasutoshi
Nishimura, both 46. All three are House of Representatives members.
While faction leaders and other veteran party members have thrown their support
behind Tanigaki, younger ones failed to select a candidate to make the race a
two-way contest between the new generation and the old.
A divided vote for the two younger candidates may work to Tanigaki's advantage
in the election, which will choose the successor to Taro Aso, who resigned as
prime minister and LDP president on Wednesday.
The leadership battle comes on the heels of the LDP's crushing defeat in the
general election late last month, in which the party lost nearly two-thirds of
the seats it had held in the lower house.
The loss pushed the LDP from power after more than half a century of almost
continuous rule in Japan and paved the way for the inauguration of Democratic
Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama as the country's new prime minister
Wednesday.
''I'm resolved to put my life on the line and become the basis for the party to
seize power again,'' Tanigaki said in his first campaign speech in the
leadership race on Friday, calling on party members to gather around him in
order to revive the party.
Kono made his signature appeal for achieving a generational shift in party
leadership and dissolving party factions, saying in a campaign speech, ''I will
create a totally new party from scratch.''
Nishimura expressed his resolve to square off with the ruling DPJ. ''I want to
face the giant ruling party by bringing together the forces of the old,
middle-aged and young, while assigning people to the positions they are best
suited for,'' he told reporters.
On the LDP leadership race, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who defected from
the LDP in the early 1990s and has now come to power as head of the rival
Democratic Party of Japan, said Friday that he hopes the LDP will change.
''Although I shouldn't say much because it's about another party, I want it to
change a lot,'' Hatoyama, whose grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama was the first LDP
president, told reporters. ''When it reaches a critical point, I believe new
forces will emerge.''
Although Aso expressed his intention to resign as party president shortly after
the Aug. 30 electoral defeat, it took time for the three contenders to make
their bids public.
Several prominent figures dropped out of the race without declaring their
intention to make a bid, notably former health minister Yoichi Masuzoe. He had
been considered the leading candidate to succeed Aso due to his favorable
public image.
Yuji Yamamoto, 57, a former state minister for financial services who chairs a
party commission set up to review the LDP's historic defeat, had signaled a
move to join the race but decided to support Nishimura.
In the upcoming poll, which will choose the 24th LDP president for a three-year
term, 199 votes will be cast by party lawmakers in the Diet and 300 by local
party members -- an arrangement that gives the latter group more weight than in
previous leadership races.
It will be only the second presidential election to be held with the party out
of power since its founding in 1955, following the 1993 leadership race, in
which Kono's father, former lower house Speaker Yohei Kono, was chosen.
==Kyodo