Word: dieting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira provoked this Circus Maximus by taking a gamble--one most observers thought he would win easily. He dissolved Japan's parliament, the Diet, in September, and called for a new election less than a year after his surprise victory in the last party election. Nothing recent conservative gains in local elections, Ohira saw a chance to buttress his own power with a big victory for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which in recent years has lost the Diet majority it had maintained through the last three decades. Ohira stumped for a tax hike to combat...
...when the voting ended, Ohira's gamble had backfired. Instead of a resounding LDP victory, Ohira's party actually lost a seat, bringing its total in the Diet's lower house to 248. (About 271 seats are necessary to control the key committees in the 511-member House of Representatives.) After the crapshoot, opposition parties in concert controlled as many seats...
Ohira's blunder shattered the precarious coalition of personal allegiances that cemented the LDP. The party itself in not a unified party at all, but a composite of different factions, groups of Diet members who give loyalty first to one prominent leader, second...
THESE rivalries erupted in a spectacular display of pettiness, absurdity and irresponsibility during the party elections in the Diet to determine the new prime minister. At one point, the Fukuda camp set up a blockade to prevent Ohira supporters from entering the Diet. Burly Ohira guards smashed the barrier, screaming obscenities into whirring television cameras. Ohira himself blocked Diet votes on the premiership three times, holding out to retain his power while the Diet remained paralyzed. After futile attempts at compromise with Fukuda, Ohira retained his seat by a mere 17 votes in the first runoff premier election in Japan...
...Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise, Pritikin with McGrady...