Time to be a little political and perhaps even add an opinion or two of my own, which doesn't happen too often.

As many of you already know, Japanese prime minister Fukuda resigned the other day. A surprise to many, and of course to me too (I do not claim to have any inside info of any importance). To be honest, I feel a little sorry for the man. Let's just say that things haven't really gone his way. He inherited the pension scandal, where some people's records of their pension were lost by the authorities. The Democratic Party has been on his back all the time, more or less saying no to things they really ought to support according to their political manifest.

So why did I like the man? Well, he was good with China and to some extent also with South Korea. He didn't go to Yasukuni Shrine. And he tried to lead the G8 group, and accomplish something with it. There are of course many opinions concerning him and most probably a few (or perhaps many) more negative ones, but mine is fairly positive, not being a supporter of the LDP in any way.

So who will replace him? Well, there won't be a new election from the looks of it, even though the Democratic party has called for one. There seem to be at the moment four candidates. The strongest is of course, Taro Aso, the secretary general of LDP (the ruling party) and then we have Nobutero Ishihara (son of Tokyo mayor Ishihara), Kaoru Yosano, the economy minister and Yuriko Koike, the former defense minister.

Aso is an arrogant bastard, who will only make the relationship with the neighbouring countries worse and spend too much money on meaningless things. Japan has today according to Wikipedia the second largest national dept (196 %)!! (I usually say 160 %) Ishihara, I don't know much about him but (and this he can't really be blaimed for) his father is an even bigger bastard than Aso. Yosano and Koike, I know very little about. Koike sat only two months as defense minister before resigning, but she is a reformist and as such she should be applauded.

So I guess my vote goes to either Koike or Yosano. But then again I don't get to vote so that won't count for much.