Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday defeated political heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa to keep his job, CNN reported. Kan won enough votes to continue leading the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ. The majority party leader typically is the prime minister. "My entire political life has been spent working towards this moment," Kan said in a speech before the party voting started. Ozawa challenged Kan for the party's leadership role just three months into the job. Ozawa said that Kan was ineffective and lacked determination, and that he was unable to wrest power from the government's powerful bureaucrats. National poll after poll showed Kan was the public's preferred choice as the nation's leader, however. Opinion polls showed 65 percent to 70 percent of the voters favored Kan; support for Ozawa lingered in the teens. But DPJ members, not the public, got to vote for the party's leader.
