Four junior Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers who have separately announced plans to stand as candidates in the party presidential election next month were unable Tuesday to select just one among them to run, DPJ officials said.
Seiji Maehara, 40; Yoshihiko Noda, 45; Shigefumi Matsuzawa, 44; and Takashi Kawamura, 53; are now expected to separately run against the party's 55-year-old leader, Yukio Hatoyama, in the Sept. 23 party election.
Talks the four held Tuesday had been widely expected to end without an agreement because Maehara and Noda are far along in their campaigns, each having already secured support from 20 DPJ lawmakers, the officials said.
The talks were held at the behest of a DPJ group seeking rejuvenation of the management of the largest opposition force. All four belong to the group.
Matsuzawa, who would prefer to see Noda represent the four, proposed at the talks that the group hold a preliminary election to select a single candidate.
Maehara and Kawamura balked at the idea, proposing instead that a single candidate be selected outside the framework of the group, for example, by means of a public opinion poll.
The September DPJ presidential election is getting increasingly crowded, with several members declaring their intention to run.
Naoto Kan, 55, the party's secretary general, announced his intention to run Monday, hoping to reclaim the post he relinquished to Hatoyama three years ago.
Other DPJ members mulling a run for the presidency include former DPJ head Takahiro Yokomichi, 61, and Kansei Nakano, 61, one of the party's four deputy chiefs.