Japan’s ruling party picks outspoken Aso to be PM

Aso, a former foreign minister, clinched the ruling Liberal Democratic Party leadership vote by a landslide to take over from Yasuo Fukuda, who quit this month just as the economy flirts with recession and faces further damage from turmoil on Wall Street.

The new leader must try to revive the world’s second-biggest economy despite the constraints of its huge public debt, although he may have scant time to do so if, as media and pundits predict, he calls an early poll for Parliament’s powerful lower house.

“Standing here, I feel that this is Taro Aso’s destiny,” Aso, the grandson of a premier, told LDP members after winning 351 of 525 valid votes cast by party lawmakers and chapters.

“But the LDP, as the Government party, must resolutely fight the (Opposition) Democratic Party in the next election, and only when we have won that election will I have fulfilled my destiny.

“It’s going to be a weak Government and there is going to be an election and there will probably be a weak Government as a result of the election,” said Columbia University professor Gerry Curtis. “Japan will not be in a position to play a more dynamic role in world affairs. It will be more and more inward-looking.”

EU ‘congratulates’ Japan’s Aso on becoming PM

Brussels: The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, mistakenly congratulated former Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on being elected as Japan’s new Prime Minister. An e-mail message in the name of EC President Jose Manuel Barroso congratulating Aso was sent to various media organisations on Sunday, but was withdrawn after eight hours. However, the Commission officials blamed the blunder on a computer programming mistake and offered an apology.