Word: ldp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dailies' lockstep front-page declaration on Sunday morning - PRIME MINISTER FUKUDA TO BE ELECTED TODAY - was an example of just how predetermined the race to replace Prime Minster Shinzo Abe was. Yasuo Fukuda's formal victory over his rival Taro Aso as the president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and, effectively, Prime Minister later that day merely made official what the country had known since Fukuda first threw his hat in the race. The two candidates fought over 528 votes - 387 LDP parliamentarian votes and 141 votes from the LDP's prefectural chapters - with Fukuda winning 330, a landslide...
...wasn't always this way. Before Prime Minister Abe unexpectedly announced his resignation on Sept. 12, Aso, his outspoken party secretary general, was long considered the successor to Abe's conservative administration. However, the moment Abe's resignation hit the airwaves, the LDP's factional politics went into high gear - and within 24 hours, 71-year-old Fukuda, who only last year declined to run for Prime Minister due to his old age, was the indisputable front-runner in the two-man race...
...race between such similar candidates end with such a lopsided result? What divided the two, essentially, was their position within the LDP. The party was clearly desperate to distance itself from a disastrous leader widely blamed for allowing the LDP's ruling coalition to lose control of the upper house of parliament in July. Abe, who on Saturday cast his absentee ballot from the Tokyo hospital bed that he has been confined to since his resignation speech, sent a message to be read after the election: "I apologize to party general secretary [Aso] and all LDP lawmakers, party members...
...widening income gap, a shifting global balance of power - many politicians seem intent on replaying ancient political battles. And it's not just a Bush here or a Kennedy there: roughly one-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...
...developing an export-led economy. Fast-forward half a century and Aso, a former Foreign Minister, staunchly supports the U.S.-Japan security alliance, while 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...