Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose opinion poll ratings are already slipping, would suffer a big blow if he fired his controversial but popular foreign minister, a newspaper survey showed on Monday.
Though 75 per cent of Japanese voters voiced support for Koizumi, a drop of six per centage points from the previous month, that figure would sink to 60 per cent if he sacked Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, the Mainichi Shimbun survey said.
The poll said that 70 per cent of those polled supported the outspoken Tanaka, who has been locked in a bitter dispute with bureaucrats and rival lawmakers since she vowed to clean up the ministry, tainted by allegations that secret funds were misued.
The newspaper polled 1,066 eligible voters over the weekend.
Koizumi on Sunday chided Tanaka for leaking advice he had meant to be private but said he had no intention of replacing her.
"I am not thinking of reshuffling the cabinet, so she can rest easy and do her job," he said at a local residents meeting in Tokyo.
Koizumi has had record-high support rates since he took office in April but Jiji news agency said last week that in a poll it had conducted his ating had slipped to 63.6 per cent, down 6.7 points from the previous month.
(China Daily November 19, 20010)
