TOKYO — Nearly 70% of Japanese voters want Prime Minister Naoto Kan to win next month’s ruling party leadership vote, dwarfing the 15.6% who back powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, an opinion poll showed on Saturday. Ozawa, 68, a critic of Kan’s efforts to rein in Japan’s huge public debt, is challenging Kan in a September 14 Democratic Party of Japan leadership race, as the country struggles with a surging currency and fragile recovery.

The winner will likely be the prime minister by virtue of the party’s majority in the parliament’s powerful lower house. It is a battle analysts say could create a policy vacuum and push the yen higher.

The poll by Kyodo News agency also showed support for Kan’s cabinet had risen by more than 9 percentage points from a survey earlier this month to 48.1%.

Admirers have credited Ozawa with engineering the huge election win that swept the DPJ to power for the first time last year, but many voters are also put off by his image of a wheeler-dealer.

Ozawa, who stepped down as party leader last year over a funding scandal, sharply criticised Kan for floating a rise in Japan’s 5 percent sales tax ahead of a July upper house election. — Reuters

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