Word: diet
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...perception that only corporate fat cats were profiting from the recovery. On July 29, the public delivered its verdict at the polls. For the first time in 52 years, opposition forces led by Ozawa's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) wrested control of the Upper House of the Diet, Japan's parliament, from the LDP. The drubbing echoed a lesson that former U.S. President George H.W. Bush learned back in 1992 when he was booted from office. "It's the economy, stupid," says Richard Katz, the New York-based editor of the Oriental Economist Report. "Up until his very last...
...fight promised to be ugly, but the issue would have taken weeks - if not months - to work its way through the Diet. So why did Abe, only three days after promising to fight on, decide to throw in the towel? Plagued by rumors of chronic ill health, he looked exhausted in the days before his resignation announcement. "Abe broke under the pressure," says Norihiko Narita, a politics professor at Surugadai University near Tokyo. "The weight of his responsibilities was just too much." For his part, Ozawa expressed bewilderment over the about-face. "I have been in politics nearly 40 years...
Japan had been anticipating Abe's resignation since he led the LDP to an historic loss in legislative elections at the end of July, which left the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in control of the Diet's Upper House for the first time in the country's history. His popularity had plummeted from a high of near 70% when he took power last September to below 30% in recent polls, after many his scandal-ridden aides began resigning. "The true nature of the LDP - a dying body on life support - has been exposed," says Japanese political analyst Hirotada...
...that Abe, who liked to tout himself as a "fighting politician," apparently had no stomach for. Abe's advisers put out the word that the Prime Minister's health had been suffering - though they offered no details - but Abe's surrender just three days into a new Diet sessions seemed less compromise than a failure of political nerve. "In my almost 40 years in politics, it's the first time I've seen this," said Ichiro Ozawa, the leader...
...biggest loser is likely to be the LDP itself, the party that has dominated Japan for nearly the entire postwar era. Though it holds, along with coalition partners, a two-thirds majority in the Diet's Lower House, and new elections aren't scheduled until Sept. 2009, sagging public support means that the next Prime Minister will almost certainly be forced to call early polls. Barring a new leader who can engineer a miracle turnaround - something none of the well-worn LDP candidates seem capable of - the party could well be tossed out of government altogether. "Abe has thrown...