Word: cabinets
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...lawmakers, party members and especially the Japanese public for causing a political vacuum." Aso's closeness to Abe, most analysts say, is what cost him his third bid for prime minister. The party instead looked to Fukuda, the long-serving speaker of Junichiro Koizumi's colorful cabinet and a skilled consensus builder, to rebuild and regain voters' confidence...
...third of Japan's sitting parliamentarians come from political nobility. Hereditary leadership doesn't just plague the LDP, which has ruled Japan virtually uninterrupted for half a century, but opposition parties as well. Ichiro Ozawa, the head of the Democratic Party of Japan, is the son of a former Cabinet minister...
...antagonizing China by defending visits of Japanese statesmen to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are memorialized. Meanwhile, Fukuda's father was an LDP stalwart who while PM promoted diplomatic relations with Asia through "heart-to-heart" dialogue. And guess what? That's what Fukuda, a former Chief Cabinet Secretary, peddles himself as today: a consensus-driven political insider who opposes Yasukuni visits because they alienate Japan's neighbors. The country's enormous public debt? A scandal-ridden pension system? A bloated bureaucracy? Neither Fukuda nor Aso has dedicated much campaign time to such issues...
...world but worried about economic concerns back home, deserves better than an old guard. Abe's predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, himself heir to a minor political dynasty, created the impression of trimming family political ties by installing private-sector civilians in key leadership posts. But Abe's most recent Cabinet re-embraced the political nobility - and neither Fukuda nor Aso can be counted on to do anything very different...
...decision by Israel's security cabinet Wednesday to declare Gaza a "hostile entity" could not have come at a worse time for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She had arrived in Israel the same day hoping to drum up support for an Israeli-Arab summit this November, which nobody outside the White House seems to want. But Israel's latest move, in retaliation for rocket fire into southern Israel from Palestinian militants in Gaza, is unlikely to help promote her mission...