Iraq Says Exxon Freezes Kurdistan Oil Deal

Senior Iraqi government officials said Friday that Exxon Mobil Corp. has told Iraq's central government that it has frozen an exploration contract with the nation's Kurdistan region, a deal Baghdad strongly opposes.

"We have received a letter from Exxon in which it stated it freezes its oil contract with Kurdistan," the government official said.

"Although we would prefer Exxon to cancel its deal with Kurdistan, freezing the contract is a step forward," another official from the Iraqi oil ministry said.

Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, wouldn't comment Friday. Last week, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said his company remains committed to working in both Kurdistan and southern Iraq.

The semiautonimous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is embroiled in a long and often contentious dispute with Iraq's central government over the right to issue oil-exploration licenses in the region.

Baghdad has essentially asked the U.S. oil giant to choose between its deal with the KRG and its contract with the central government to develop the 370,000 barrels-a-day West Qurna Phase 1 field in southern Iraq. The impasse has also led Exxon to be barred from Iraq's fourth oil-and-gas licensing auction, scheduled for May.

The first Iraqi official said Exxon stated it has frozen its contract with the KRG until a new national oil-and-gas law is enacted. A new version of the law was introduced last year but it has been stalled in Parliament.

Exxon is already producing around 370,000 barrels a day of oil from the West Qurna field under a service contract with the Baghdad government. Many other large oil companies, including BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Eni SpA and Lukoil Holdings have similar contracts.

The KRG has signed nearly 50 oil and gas deals with international oil companies, mostly second-tier or wildcat explorers. The KRG hoped Exxon's presence would lead to other oil majors beginning operations in the region.

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Posted in: Exxon,Freezes,Kurdistan

Anglican Leader to Step Down

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury who has overseen a turbulent decade as spiritual leader of about 80 million followers of the Anglican faith, said he would step down at the end of the year and take up a new post as master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Known for possessing a scholarly and versatile mind, as well as a gift for the common touch, Dr. Williams leaves as the institution faces divisive debates over homosexuality and gender.

For the past decade, Dr. Williams has tried to blend progressive views with Anglican theology and thus adapt the church's doctrine to modern society. For example, the Church of England is nearing a final vote about allowing women to become bishops; Dr. Williams has tried to balance the demands of those who support the idea with those who don't.

In a statement on his web site, Dr. Williams, 61 years old, said it has been an "immense privilege to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury over the past decade, and moving on has not been an easy decision." He didn't explicitly say in his statement why he planned to resign.

In an interview with the British news agency Press Association, however, he nodded to the difficult choices on the horizon. The looming final vote on female bishops was one of the "watersheds" this year that persuaded him to consider moving on, Dr. Williams said in the interview.

"I think that it is a job of immense demands and I would hope that my successor has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros," Dr. Williams said.


Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

It hasn't been an easy decade. Dr. Williams has written in sympathetic terms about gay relationships and thus drawn disapproval from conservative members of the church. Meanwhile, the liberal wing has expressed frustration that the Archbishop's socially liberal stance hasn't engendered enough real change in the church.

"He's been attempting to hold both theological liberals and conservatives together, and that has meant that he's suppressed his own views," said Paul Handley, managing editor of Church Times, a leading Anglican weekly newspaper in the U.K. "As a result, he's been battered by both sides."

Dr. Williams is in the midst of a key battle right now. He has backed a deal, known as the Anglican Covenant, that would effectively prevent openly homosexual clergy from becoming bishops—a pact aimed at preventing the church from splitting.

The document was conceived in 2003 after Gene Robinson was elected the first openly gay Anglican bishop by the U.S. Episcopal Church. Conservative priests—especially those in Africa—protested, and Dr. Williams set up a commission to mend the rift.

Dr. Williams unveiled the covenant in 2010 and called for it to be endorsed or risk seeing the "piece-by-piece dissolution" of the Anglican church. Branches of the church around the world are mulling whether to adopt the covenant.

Anglicanism arose from the 16th-century rift between Henry VIII and the Catholic Church, and is the world's third-largest group of Christians after the Catholics and the Orthodox. The queen of England is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and formally appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican church is a loose federation and the Archbishop of Canterbury has few powers to enforce unity among its 38 autonomous provinces.

The Anglican churches in richer countries, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Canada, tend to be more liberal. Their counterparts in Africa and other parts of the developing world are bigger and are often more conservative.

Dr. Williams was confirmed as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury in December 2002. He has written more than two dozen books on subjects ranging from history and poetry to economics, theology and the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky. He is a fan of the TV show "The Simpsons."

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Posted in: Anglican,Leader

Osborne Finalizes U.K. Budget

 

U.K. Chancellor George Osborne may be bending under pressure to cut the 50% rate of tax imposed on high earners in next week's budget. Dow Jones's Ainsley Thomson assesses whether he can or should.

Preparations for the U.K. government's budget entered their closing stages Friday, with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne seeking to stimulate the faltering economy while still adhering to his aggressive deficit reduction plan.

During a final round of meetings between Mr. Osborne, Prime Minister David Cameron and their Liberal Democrat colleagues, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, negotiations are expected to center on finding a compromise between the Lib Dem goal of an income tax break for families and the Conservative Party's wish for a business-friendly budget and a potential cut to the top income-tax rate.

The negotiations are set against the backdrop of sluggish economic growth and come a day after Fitch Ratings became the second ratings agency in the past month to warn that the U.K. may lose its prized triple-A rating if it strays from its deficit reduction plan or if there is an escalation in the euro-zone crisis.

The ratings warning has strengthened Mr. Osborne's resolve to stay the course on the austerity plan and has all but ruled out any chance of an unfunded budget giveaway.

The news isn't all bad for Osborne. Four months ago, when he last updated Britain on the state of the country's finances, he was forced to admit that economic growth would be weaker and borrowing considerably higher than he had hoped.

Next Wednesday, he will have the altogether more pleasant task of saying the U.K. has borrowed less in the 2011/2012 financial year than expected. Economists expect public sector net borrowing for the financial year, which ends on April 5, to undershoot the £127 billion ($199.53 billion) target by between £5 billion and £10 billion. Economists also expect borrowing in the 2012/2013 financial year will be lower than the £120 billion target.

Mr. Osborne is faced with the dilemma of whether he uses this fiscal cushion to fund a stimulus measure, such as a temporary tax cut, or whether he puts it toward reducing the deficit. His rhetoric in recent weeks suggests he is leaning heavily toward the latter.

Philip Rush, economist at Nomura, said he expects the budget to be fiscally neutral, saying the days of "tax, spend, borrow and hope" are long over.

"Delivering a budget that appeases demands from the electorate for the government to 'do something' about the stagnant recovery is no easy feat," Mr. Rush said. "With the public finances still in very poor shape after two years of austerity, the chancellor has to conjure up this something out of virtually nothing."

The chancellor will also be mindful that alongside the budget, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility will state whether he has met his overriding fiscal goals of eliminating the structural deficit over a five-year rolling period and reducing the ratio of net debt to gross domestic product by 2015-16. Economists expect the OBR will judge that he remains on target—just—to meet the goals.

One of the central themes of the budget is expected to be income redistributio—-essentially shifting the burden of the austerity measures to those 'with the broadest shoulders', namely the wealthy.

The Lib Dems, the junior partners in the coalition, have publicly pushed for an income tax break for low-paid workers, saying the pressure on family finances has reached breaking point. The party wants to see an acceleration of the coalition agreement to raise the threshold at which people start paying income tax to £10,000. Lib Dem leader Mr. Clegg has suggested this should be funded by raising taxes on high earners. The chancellor has previously said he is "listening very carefully" to the Lib Dems' proposals.

Mr. Osborne has also come under pressure to do something to help the so-called "squeezed middle"—families who have seen their incomes fall in real terms due to high inflation and muted wage growth. In particular he is being urged to change the controversial policy that will remove child benefits for around 1.2 million families with one adult earning more than £43,000 per year from 2013.

Speculation has been rife in recent days that the current top income-tax rate of 50% on earnings over £150,000 will be lowered. Following claims that the top tax rate was failing to raise significant revenue, Mr. Osborne ordered the tax department to carry out a review, which will be published alongside the budget.

But it is a politically difficult move for the Conservative Party, which has worked hard to change the perception that it is the party of the rich elite. Mr. Osborne will be acutely aware that he will face accusations of pandering to high earners if he removes or reduces the top tax rate without introducing a corresponding tax on wealth.

The Lib Dems have lobbied for the introduction of a 'mansion tax' on properties worth £1 million or more, and last week Mr. Clegg called for a "tycoon tax" that would require wealthy Britons to pay a minimum proportion of their total incomes as tax. Whether or not the two proposals find favor with the Conservative Party remains to be seen, but the two coalition partners could find common ground on clamping down on wealthy people who avoid paying tax.

Both parties want the budget to be as business friendly as possible to try and foster economic growth. There will be a raft of low-cost initiatives included in the budget, such as measures to cut red tape and to improve the competitiveness of the labor market.

Another business friendly initiative expected to be included in the budget is tax relief for British producers of "high-end" television shows like "Downton Abbey". The U.K. government is concerned that Britain is struggling to keep big-budget TV projects in the face of tax competition from abroad. It also sees the export of British entertainment as a way to promote the U.K. overseas.

The Treasury declined to comment on budget speculation.

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Posted in: Budget,Finalizes,Osborne

Documents Show Bin Laden's Obama Plot

Osama bin Laden tried to orchestrate a plot to kill President Barack Obama by ordering his terrorist network to target presidential aircraft, according to an administration official citing documents found in the al Qaeda leader's compound in Pakistan after his death last May.

U.S. officials said the threat wasn't serious. Al Qaeda didn't have the capability to shoot down aircraft, officials said.

"Bin Laden clearly had bold ambitions to kill as many innocent people as possible," another administration official said.

The official added that the U.S. believes al Qaeda's "capacity to pull off those types of complex attacks has been greatly diminished, and that bin Laden himself spent much of his time brooding and providing guidance that often fell on deaf ears."

News about the plot against Mr. Obama resurfaced Friday in a column by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who reviewed the documents.

Intelligence analysts have spent the months since bin Laden was killed sifting through documents, letters, video and other materials retrieved from his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Some of the information is being declassified and is set to be released to the public in coming months.
"However, part of the picture that emerges from these documents is a portrait of a weakened and beleaguered core al Qaeda—an organization rife with internal disputes over its global strategy and operational priorities—and whose now-deceased leader was obsessively focused on the group's own image," the administration official said.

Bin laden also sought to launch attacks against aircraft transporting Gen. David Petraeus, the current Central Intelligence Agency director who at the time was the commander in charge of the Afghanistan war. And a letter found in the compound shows bin Laden considered changing al Qaeda's name in an apparent attempt to rehabilitate its public image.

Many of these details were previously known. Television reports last year mentioned the threat against Mr. Obama, and the plot to kill Gen. Petraeus emerged during recent confirmation hearings.

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Posted in: Documents,Laden's,Obama

Spain Eyes Canaries for Oil

The Spanish government approved Friday a permit to explore for oil offshore the Canary Islands in an area that could become by far the largest source of oil production in a country heavily dependent on crude imports.

Approval of the exploration license marks the latest move in Spain's shift away from a policy of subsidy-dependent renewable energy projects as it seeks ways to improve its trade balance and steady its budget. The Canary Islands local government, however, opposes the project amid concerns that it and potential future production could discourage tourists drawn to its white-sand beaches.

Conservative estimates by Madrid-based Repsol YPF SA, which would carry out the exploration, show that the concessions could eventually yield daily production of 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent, people familiar with the situation say. While relatively small in global terms, that would be significant for Spain, amounting to about 10% of its daily crude oil imports in 2011, according to government data.

Kristian Rix, a spokesman for Repsol, wouldn't confirm the figure but said it is a reasonable estimate based on the company's own calculations.

The new exploration "is a big deal," said Kash Burchett, a European oil analyst with energy consultant IHS Cera. Even though Spain's crude imports have declined in recent years as its economy has weakened, demands have increased for it to improve its trade gap and balance its budget.

"It isn't entirely surprising that the government is seeking to exploit whatever reserves they can" and generate potentially substantial tax revenue from them, Mr. Burchett said.

To be sure, Repsol's exploratory drilling may reveal amounts of oil below its estimates, and even if the projections prove to be accurate, Repsol says the license area—near the border where Morocco already allows oil exploration—wouldn't reach plateau production for a decade. The project would require investment of €9 billion over 20 years, Repsol Chairman Antonio Brufau has said.

And oil from the project may not all end up being used in Spain, as Repsol could decide to ship it elsewhere in pursuit of higher margins.

Approval for the project would come as other governments in the region—among the worst hit by the euro-zone crisis—step up efforts to identify natural resources for exploitation. Portugal's new government, scrambling for money, has started granting agreements to mine for iron ore and other materials, and last October granted rights to explore for oil off of its tourist-heavy southern coast.

The Canary Islands project faces local opposition. Tourists flock to beaches on the islands, which are about 100 kilometers (62 miles) off Morocco's west coast, providing the most important industry for a region that has some of Spain's highest unemployment rates.

"The Canary Islands' selling points are sun, landscapes, white-sand beaches and crystalline water," said Fernando Ríos Rull, a representative for the Canary Islands government on legal and industrial matters. "That is totally incompatible with exploration for oil."

He said the Canary government will appeal the exploration permit in the courts in hopes of annulling the decision.

Repsol says it has ample experience safely drilling offshore and before drilling any exploratory wells will conduct an environmental study requiring official authorization.

"This is our home turf, so we are especially interested in making this project a success," said spokesman Mr. Rix.

The new production could be a significant boost for Repsol, which holds 50% in the consortium that would operate in the area. In 2011, its daily oil production was 110,000 barrels, a decline of 24% from 2010 partly due to the production stoppage in Libya.

Spain first granted Repsol the right to explore for oil about 60 kilometers from the coast of the Canary Islands in early 2002, and seismic studies determined that oil likely lies in rock formations about 3,000 (9,900 feet) to 3,500 meters below the surface. But local governments objected, and the exploration program got tangled up in the courts, resulting in 2004 in the permit's suspension.

Repsol resubmitted a corrected application, but Spain's Socialist Party, which had recently come to power on a platform that included moving toward renewable-energy sources, never issued final approval. Instead, the government enacted strong incentives to encourage higher wind and solar power production. Spain is now among the countries that derive the greatest percentage of electricity consumption from renewable sources, more than 30% in 2011.

But a new government was elected in December. Within weeks new Energy Minister José Manuel Soria, a former top official in the Canary Islands regional government, suspended a subsidy program for new installations of renewable-energy projects, in part on concerns that it wasn't economically sustainable.

Friday, Spain's government spokeswoman Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría said that there would be no arguments for further delaying the exploration project as long as environmental guarantees are met.

While the amount of money oil production in the Canary Islands could generate is unclear, Repsol says it could create hundreds or thousands of jobs. However, Mr. Ríos Rull cautioned that the Canary Islands' largely less-qualified work force is unlikely to secure many new jobs from oil production in the region.

Repsol shares were down 0.8% at €19 ($25), valuing the company at €23.25 billion.

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Posted in: Canaries,Spain

Iran's Censors Tighten Grip

ran hasn't been shy about its bids to monitor, filter and block content on the Internet. Now it has taken the next leap, turning online censorship into an institution.

In the past week, the government has announced it has formed a high council dedicated to cleansing the country's Internet of sites that threaten morality and national security, launching what amounts to a centralized command structure for online censorship.

 

Iranian women in a Tehran Internet cafe last month. 

Cybercafes have been targeted by government.

The Supreme Council of Cyberspace, created by decree last week by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, includes heads of intelligence, militia, security and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as media chiefs. Charged with supervising all cyberactivity, it will have the power to enact laws, according to state media.

The body will have its own budget and offices, a member of the council said in an interview with state media on Wednesday.

In announcing the council, Iran unites Internet-control initiatives that have previously been floated in state media. Along with other moves in the past week, it shows that the Islamic Republic, after long viewing the Internet as a minor nuisance, has fully embraced the view that Iran's vibrant online activity is a destabilizing threat.

The Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC, said last week it has rolled out a secure internal network for high-level commanders, underscoring Tehran's concerns about outside threats to its government's online activities. Iran also announced in the past week that its "Cyber Army," as it styles its legion of government hackers and bloggers, has reached 120,000, a number impossible to corroborate but well above previous tallies.

In an annual report released Monday, the group Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran the No. 1 enemy of the Internet in 2012. It was ahead of 11 other countries—including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, China and Belarus—that the group says restrict Internet access, filter content and imprison bloggers.

Cyber Challenges and Crackdowns June 12, 2009 Iran's President Ahmadinejad re-elected in polls marred by irregularities. June 15 Protests erupt across the country, largely organized and documented online. June 20 Web video of death of Neda Agha-Soltan, shot during protests, seen world-wide. June Parliament passes law on computer crimes, with punishments including death penalty. February 2010 Tracking activists by cellphones and emails, Iran's security forces conduct widespread arrests, successfully crushing protests. February 2011 Inspired by Arab Spring, Iranians take to the streets after a yearlong lull, calling for the end of the Islamic Republic's regime. January 2012 Iranian authorities call for mandatory user registration, cameras in Internet cafes. March Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orders the creation of a Supreme Council on Cyberspace.

The Iranian council's mandate became clearer Wednesday when one of its members, conservative cleric Hamid Shahriari, said the council was the result of a year and a half of weekly meetings between security chiefs and Khamenei representatives. "We are worried about a portion of cyberspace that is used for exchanging information and conducting espionage," he said in an interview with the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

"We have identified and confronted 650 websites that have been set up to battle our regime—39 of them are by opposition groups and our enemies, and the rest promote Western culture and worshiping Satan, and stoke sectarian divides," he said. He didn't name the sites or clarify whether they had already been filtered. Mr. Shahriari said the council would also "focus and facilitate positive aspects of the Internet, like business and trade."

The Internet dominated a well-known Friday prayer sermon on March 9, which is televised from the campus of Tehran University. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, an 85-year-old cleric, called cyberspace a "very serious danger" and praised the new council, urging Iranians to comply with the government's laws and restrictions.

The IRGC's new network—named Basir, or "Perceptive"—is a domestically built, secure telecommunication channel that will allow its highest-level officers to communicate and command brigades in the case of an attack, the guard's newspaper, Sobhe Sadegh, reported last week.

"We are not in an imaginary state of threats and sanctions," Hossein Salami, the deputy commander in chief of the IRGC, said during the network's inauguration ceremony last week, according to Iranian media reports. "We must prepare."

Israel has in recent weeks drummed up support for a possible attack on what it alleges are sites linked to nuclear-weapon production, a pursuit Iran denies. Iran is also worried about cyberattacks on its nuclear facilities, such as the 2010 Stuxnet virus that appeared aimed at disabling Iranian centrifuge arrays.

The IRGC's closed network appears to be separate from a national Internet that Iran's telecommunications company has said it expects to complete within a year, which leaders have billed as void of Western culture and un-Islamic content.

The IRGC's public-relations department also announced last week that it had recruited and trained 120,000 cultural soldiers in the past three years to combat "a soft cyberwar" against Iran. Iranian officials had previously discussed the presence of these forces, but placed their number closer to 20,000.

These "cybersoldiers" monitor online activity of opposition sites and dissidents, bombarding websites with comments and producing blog content in support of the regime and hacking emails and computers, according to a computer programmer in Iran employed by the telecommunication ministry. They report to various state bodies, including intelligence, judiciary and the IRGC, which in turn have top officials sitting on the new council.

"These strong measures to confront the Internet recently prove two things: the Internet has been an extremely effective way of distributing information and the regime is frightened by it," said Ali Jamshidi, a Malaysia-based telecommunication expert with the opposition Green Movement, who monitors the so-called Cyber Army's attacks on opposition websites and dissident blogs.

The IRGC began expanding its multi-billion dollar empire—which stretches from construction to energy and agriculture—to telecommunications in 2009, when it purchased 50% shares of Iran's national telecommunication company, effectively allowing it direct supervision on surveillance and censorship.

The Internet, particularly social networking sites, and mobile phones helped Iranian activists to mobilize for anti-government protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election prompted allegations of voting fraud.

While the Islamic Republic has successfully crushed protests in the streets with heavy crackdowns, activism and anti-government sentiment is thriving online on Iranian blogs, opposition websites and chat rooms.

Iranian cyber activists worry that the new tightening of rules will make their work even more difficult and expose their identities.

"We will fight back and continue posting our opinions but our resources are very limited compared to what the Revolutionary Guards can do," said a female student activist in Iran.

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Posted in: Censors,Iran's,Tighten

Mayor Aims to Crash Tokyo's Party

 

Toru Hashimoto, addressing a crowd in Osaka in November, is betting Japan is looking for a strong leader.

The outspoken mayor of Japan's third-largest city has made a name for himself by battling labor unions and bureaucrats, setting himself apart from the country's normally staid lawmakers. Now, Toru Hashimoto is talking about shaking up national politics with an ambitious plan to make his two-year-old local party the largest voting bloc in Parliament.

It is a brazen, far-fetched idea in a country that was ruled by one party for nearly half a century, and where new political organizations usually rise and fall without ever growing beyond a minor presence.

But Mr. Hashimoto, 42 years old, is betting that the Japanese public is sick of a political system that is headed by its sixth weak prime minister in six years, and is seeking a more powerful leader to take the reins.

"We go through our leaders like disposable supplies because there's no sense that we put them in power," Mr. Hashimoto said in a speech to supporters at a dinner here last month.

Provocative Character 

Toru Hashimoto is Japan's most-followed politician on Twitter. A sampling of his tweets:
Feb. 6 2011: '[My party] will destroy Osaka city hall to protect Osaka's residents.' Nov. 4, 2011: 'Only a political showdown can change the system. Naïve, unworldly academics and commentators, you all need to study up on real politics.' Feb. 22, 2012: 'Rising for the national anthem is an internationally accepted practice.…If we don't have to rise for our national anthem, we're no longer a nation.'
 -- Source: WSJ research

He put it more boldly last year in a meeting with members of his nascent party, when he declared: "What Japanese politics needs most is a dictatorship." Such comments, combined with his proposals for giving leaders more power, have led his critics to call his platform "Hashism," merging his name with "fascism."　

Mr. Hashimoto's emerging platform is light on policy ideas, from economics to diplomacy and defense.

"Most of his policies are half-baked—he raises issues for the sake of raising them to get a reaction," said Yasunori Sone, a political-science professor at Keio University, "How he plans to turn those fireworks into concrete policies is unclear."

But the attorney-turned-celebrity television commentator is getting a more favorable reception from the Japanese public at large. An avid tweeter, he is now the most-followed Japanese politician on Twitter, as he mercilessly lashes out against critics and political rivals. He was named "the most suitable politician to lead Japan" in a mid-January national phone survey of 1,000 by the national daily Sankei and FNN television network. His 21.4% compared with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's 3.6%.

In more recent polls, a majority of the voters consistently say they want his Osaka-based political party to enter national politics and take on the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which generally garners less than 20% support.

The big test for Mr. Hashimoto's quest will come during the next round of parliamentary elections. While a vote isn't required before next year, many political observers are betting that Mr. Noda may exercise his power to call one—or be forced to do so—by the end of the summer, amid a legislative gridlock over his priority push to raise the sales tax in an attempt to curb Japan's outsize government debt.

In anticipation of such a contest, Mr. Hashimoto's party plans to open a "school" in Osaka this month to train candidates. It has already attracted thousands of applicants nationwide, including one DPJ lawmaker.

Mr. Hashimoto's party insists it can win 200 of the 480 seats in the lower house in the next election, which, while falling short of a majority, would give him the largest bloc in the legislature.

So far, Mr. Hashimoto says he doesn't harbor ambitions to run for parliament or prime minister, but would run his party from his current perch.

Mr. Hashimoto generally shuns newspaper interviews, denying repeated requests for this article. He prefers to limit his appearances to unfiltered TV, where he uses his oral skills to blast critics.

His emerging national platform focuses on scaling back government and giving leaders more freedom to enact their agendas. He wants to amend the constitution to allow for direct popular election of the prime minister, who is currently chosen by parliament, and to scrap the upper house, which has in recent years regularly blocked prime ministers' proposals from becoming law.

Mr. Hashimoto, like conservative Republicans who have taken control of some U.S. state governments, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, has made a point of battling labor unions representing government employees. After winning a campaign on streamlining city hall, the agenda he submitted for the current session of the Osaka city assembly, which opened Feb. 28, includes a stricter performance-evaluation system for civil servants, and a sharp reduction in pay for government employees—including a 42% cut for himself.

A father of seven children, Mr. Hashimoto is also fighting the education establishment. He wants to transfer power from the board of education to parents by giving them more say in faculty evaluations. On Feb. 29, the city assembly passed his proposed ordinance mandating all Osaka public-school teachers stand for the national anthem during school events—a particularly provocative move for a union long infused by Japan's postwar pacifism. Local media reported that several teachers have been reprimanded for disobeying—a largely symbolic gesture.

Mr. Hashimoto began his career as a lawyer, developing a private practice that ranged from corporate to juvenile law. He developed a side career as a commentator on local TV talk shows, winning over audiences with his flair, his passion for issues—and his bright-orange bleached hair and tinted glasses. (Mr. Hashimoto now wears contacts and his hair is its natural black.) He rode his fame to jump into politics, winning nearly double the votes of his runner-up in the 2008 Osaka gubernatorial race to become Japan's youngest-ever governor at the time.

As governor, Mr. Hashimoto slashed government spending and balanced the Osaka prefectural budget, which had been operating at a deficit for a decade. Last year, Mr. Hashimoto quit his job as governor of Osaka prefecture to run for mayor of Osaka city, the beginning of a bid to consolidate the two governing units and enhance the clout of its leader. He won with 59% of the vote.

Since his November victory, Mr. Hashimoto has been in the national spotlight, most recently for searching through senior Osaka city officials' emails for evidence they were engaged in political-campaign activities during work hours. One high-ranking official has been caught having been involved in Mr. Hashimoto's opponent's campaign on the job, but no penalties or reprimands have been issued.

"I don't know what the Osaka municipal-reform plan is about, just that Mr. Hashimoto seems to be able to push for change," said Osaka taxi driver Michio Ogami. Takashi Ota, a 30-year-old who has been job-hopping between convenience stores, among other places, said he never voted until backing Mr. Hashimoto in the November election. "At least he seems one to do something," he said. "Anything."

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Posted in: Crash,Mayor,Party,Tokyo's