Japan's parliament elected political insider Yasuo Fukuda as prime minister Tuesday, thrusting the veteran moderate into the job of battling a resurgent opposition and rebuilding the scandal-scarred ruling party.As a measure of the troubles that await Fukuda, 71, the Diet, Japan's parliament, split over his election, with the lower house supporting him but the upper house choosing an opposition leader. Under parliamentary rules, the lower house decision triumphed.
Fukuda took over from Shinzo Abe, a nationalist who lasted barely a year in office after a drumbeat of damaging scandals and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's loss in upper house elections in July discredited him and his party.
Fukuda, the first son of a prime minister to take the post, acknowledged the difficulties ahead, calling for the kind of discipline he had to enforce as chief Cabinet secretary from 2000 to 2004.
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