TOKYO (AFP) — The Bank of Japan was set to get a new chief Wednesday just two days before a crucial global finance meeting after the opposition-led upper house of parliament approved the government's nominee.
Ending a political stalemate that has left the central bank's top job empty for three weeks, the house voted in favour of deputy governor Masaaki Shirakawa after the opposition had previously shot down two other nominees.
As the ruling party controls the lower house which votes later Wednesday, Shirakawa -- acting head of the bank since the top job fell vacant -- has effectively cleared the last hurdle to becoming the bank's governor.
A career central banker and expert on monetary policy, the 58-year-old Shirakawa is seen by analysts as a safe choice who is unlikely to cave in to political pressure over monetary policy.
He told a parliamentary hearing Tuesday that the top task for the BoJ was to ensure financial market stability.
"The core duty of central banks is to manage crises by providing liquidity and maintaining the stability of the financial system and markets," he said.
Tokyo had sought to end the leadership vacuum to avoid sending an acting chief to a meeting of finance leaders from the Group of Seven rich nations in Washington on Friday, when global market turmoil will top the agenda.
The opposition signalled on Tuesday that it would approve Shirakawa, and Senate president Satsuki Eda announced that the upper chamber had approved him in a 231-7 vote on Wednesday morning.
But the political row was not fully over, as the upper house also rejected the government's choice for one of the two deputy governor posts, Hiroshi Watanabe, a former senior finance ministry official.
The government says that the next deputy governor should be from the finance ministry to ensure good coordination between monetary and fiscal policy, while the opposition rejects giving top jobs to former bureaucrats.
Shirakawa spent more than three decades at the BoJ, working his way up to the post of executive director before leaving in 2006 to become a professor at the Kyoto University School of Government.
The opposition voted down the first two candidates for the post of governor, saying that as former top financial bureaucrats they were too cosy with the government to ensure the independence of the central bank.
"I am resolved to act based on the two principles for the Bank of Japan, which are its independence and transparency," Shirakawa said on Tuesday.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
