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オーストラリアンの記事を紹介します。
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25463904-25837,00.html
Rival Ichiro Ozawa's fall bolsters Japanese PM Taro Aso's poll hopes
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
May 12, 2009
JAPAN'S opposition leader, Ichiro Ozawa, has resigned over a political funding scandal, a move likely to dramatically reshape the looming general election contest.
Mr Ozawa yesterday bowed to internal pressure and mounting external evidence that the two-month-old scandal around his leadership was wrecking the Democratic Party of Japan's chances of winning government.
His chief electorate secretary was arrested on March 3 and was indicted on charges of receiving Y35 billion ($466 million) in illegal political donations from a construction company.
Though Mr Ozawa has consistently denied any wrongdoing by himself or his staffer, polling since the arrest suggests growing public distrust has stolen the DPJ's electoral momentum and revived the Liberal Democratic Party's hopes of clinging to government.
A Yomiuri Shimbun poll published yesterday said 71 per cent of respondents objected to Mr Ozawa staying as leader.
As preferred prime minister, the incumbent Taro Aso polled 40 per cent against the opposition leader's 25 per cent.
In line with other polls, Yomiuri's showed support for the LDP topping Mr Ozawa's DPJ, 26.8per cent to 23.4 per cent, for the second successive month.
At the end of February, when the Aso cabinet's ratings had sunk into the low teens, it seemed the DPJ needed only to wait for the Prime Minister to name an election to claim their historic victory - only the second defeat of an LDP government since 1955.
Now Mr Aso, who must call a House of Representatives election before the LDP-New Komeito coalition's four-year term expires on September 11, eyes an election that looks winnable for the first time since he became leader seven months ago.
Last week, he signalled he was eyeing a July date.
That may have been the final blow to Mr Ozawa's leadership, forcing already-restive colleagues to confront the risk of continuing deterioration in their support and popularity while Mr Ozawa remained aboard.
His replacement is likely to come from a quartet of former DPJ leaders, Seiji Maehara whom Mr Ozawa replaced in 2006, Katsuya Okada, who resigned after the DPJ was whipped at the 2005 election, Naoto Kan and Yukio Hatoyama.
Mr Okada, the current favourite, and Mr Maehara are from the party's Right and the others from the Left.
The painful irony for Mr Ozawa is that he had succeeded where his predecessors failed;
in placing the DPJ in a realistic position to win government for the first time in the party's 13-year existence. A brilliant strategist, Mr Ozawa organised the 2007 upper house election campaign in which the DPJ and smaller opposition parties grabbed control of the upper chamber.
He then blockaded the government's legislative program from the upper house, forcing two prime ministers, Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda, to resign in little more than a year before Mr Aso took the reins last September.
