WORLD : Prospect for Japan Leader Emerges
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TOKYO — A former education minister who served a reform-minded government in the 1970s emerged today as front-runner in the race to become Japan’s next prime minister.
Toshiki Kaifu became the leading choice to replace Sosuke Uno, who has been in power only two months, after 78-year-old Toshio Komoto said he would not run for president of the deeply troubled Liberal Democratic Party.
Kaifu acknowledged receiving about $110,000 in political funds from the Recruit Co., at the center of the influence-buying scandal that has rocked Japan’s political Establishment. But he said that all the donations had been reported, and that he had stopped receiving money from the company after the scandal burst last year.
The Liberal Democrats are to choose a new leader on Tuesday to replace Uno who was forced to resign in a sex scandal.
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