Word: ldp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rate of 12.7%, Japan's worst showing since the 1974 oil shock. But instead of taking vigorous steps to counteract a worsening recession, Prime Minister Taro Aso is lurching from one embarrassing gaffe to the next, and seems in imminent danger of losing control of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - and control of the government...
...Indeed, the only thing falling faster than Japanese industrial output is Aso's popularity, which according to a recent Nippon Television survey has sunk to a 9.7% approval rate, the worst for a Japanese Prime Minister since 2001. Even fellow LDP stalwart Junichiro Koizumi, the influential former Prime Minister, has publicly criticized Aso's blunders, calling them "appalling" and "laughable." Nakagawa's Yeltsin-like meltdown "is one more nail in Aso's coffin," says Robert Dujarric, director at Temple University's Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies. "It shows that he's incompetent and so is his administration...
...taught DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa to play the chess-like game of Go, will now wear three hats in Aso's government, running the ministries of economy and finance and the Financial Services Agency, which oversees banking. A fiscal conservative, Yosano was runner-up to Aso in the LDP elections last September. If things get much worse for the Prime Minister, there is even talk that Yosano could become the new head of the party and lead it into upcoming general elections. How well this bodes for the struggling LDP remains to be seen; the last time that Yosano...
...huge postal savings system - a key financial reform that Koizumi pushed through in 2005. Koizumi said on Feb. 12 that Aso's comments made him "flabbergasted to the point that I want to laugh." Koizumi also expressed doubts about Aso's stimulus package and his ability to lead the LDP in upcoming parliamentary elections. Gerald Curtis, professor of political science at Columbia University, says there is an obvious rift in the LDP. Koizumi's attack on Aso was a way of "throwing down the gauntlet," he says...
...Curtis adds that if Aso resigns, the LDP would need to find someone to lead the party into the general election. "But who wants that job now when they know they're going to lose the next election?" Curtis says. "Either way, you have to assume the chances are very good that the LDP will get absolutely blasted in the next election and that the [opposition Democratic Party of Japan] will come to power," he says...