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Ozawa, Kan to face off in DPJ presidential election+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 7_(Kyodo) _ Two veteran lawmakers, Ichiro Ozawa and Naoto Kan, will face off in the presidential election of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan on Friday in the wake of a scandal involving a fake e-mail message. The election is expected to be a duel between Ozawa, 63, a former party vice president, and Kan, 59, a two-time party president. Those planning to run in the election are to file their candidacy before 10 a.m. at the DPJ headquarters. DPJ lawmakers will meet at a Tokyo hotel at 3 p.m. to listen to speeches by candidates and then to cast their ballots. The result of the poll is expected to be known possibly before 5 p.m. Ozawa and Kan agreed in a meeting Thursday to work to enhance unity within the party whichever of the two is elected party leader. The election is being called because current leader Seiji Maehara is stepping down over the scandal, in which the DPJ attacked a senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker in February on the basis of the fabricated e-mail. The next leader -- the fifth during Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's nearly five years in office -- is expected to strive to restore the DPJ's credibility following the e-mail fiasco and enable it to vie again with the LDP in major elections slated for next year. Maehara, who had assumed the presidency after the DPJ's heavy defeat in the general election last September, announced his intention to resign last Friday to take responsibility for the e-mail blunder. The winner will complete the remainder of Maehara's term through September. Ozawa, a 13-term House of Representatives member, was once a key member of the LDP but broke away from it in June 1993 to spearhead a political realignment and founded the Liberal Party in 1998, which was absorbed by the DPJ in September 2003. He has been labeled a "breaker" and "high-handed" due to his sometimes aggressive manner and his tough image. Kan, an activist-turned-lawmaker, headed the DPJ before Katsuya Okada, Maehara's predecessor, but resigned in May 2004 over his past failure to pay public pension premiums, a scandal that surfaced when the DPJ was grilling the government over pension reforms. He also served as the first DPJ leader from April 1998 to September 1999. |