Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan attends a budget committee meeting in the upper house of parliament in Tokyo, Monday, (Reuters).
Beleaguered Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is unlikely to call a snap election despite pressure from opposition parties who are blocking budget bills, a ruling party lawmaker who has his eye on succeeding Kan said on Tuesday.
Kan, whose voter ratings have sunk to around 20 per cent since taking office last June, is struggling to pass bills needed to implement a $1 trillion budget for the fiscal year from April in a divided parliament, while keeping his fractious Democratic Party (DPJ) from unravelling.
But opposition parties, scenting blood after Sunday's sudden resignation of Kan's foreign minister over a donations scandal, look determined not to cooperate, hoping to trigger a snap poll they are betting they can win less than two years after the Democrats swept to power.
"I don't think there will be an election in May or June under Kan, because that would be an election that he was forced to call, rather than one that he called on his own initiative," Shinji Tarutoko told Reuters in an interview, adding that he thought the government and ruling party were in crisis.
"There is no one who doesn't think (it's a crisis)," he said.
"It would be meaningless to have an election. Completely meaningless. Nothing would change ... because the numbers in the upper house wouldn't change," Tarutoko said.
The DPJ now has a large majority in parliament's more powerful lower house, but not in the upper chamber, which can block bills. Analysts agree that even if - as seems likely now - the DPJ performs worse than its main opposition rival, the deadlock will likely remain because no single party has an upper house majority. No election is set for the chamber until 2013.
Tarutoko stopped short of calling for Kan to resign, but said that in principle a change at the top might help break the deadlock. "In general, if the top changes, various things could be possible. Passage of the (budget) related bills is difficult if things stay as they are," he said.
Tarutoko, who challenged Kan in a party leadership race last June but lost by a wide margin, reiterated that he would throw his hat in the ring if a party leadership vote were held, whether sooner or later.
But he shied away from clarifying his stance towards Kan's push for fiscal reforms, including a rise in the 5 percent sales tax to fund ballooning social welfare costs and curb Japan's huge public debt.
"The problem for the current government is not a question of its policies and whether they are right or wrong. The problem more than anything else is management is not skillful," he said.
"It's fine to say what you want to do, but the role of politics is to implement things. If you just keep saying 'I want to do this', that is not politics."
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