Word: ldp
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Korea's nuclear shocker posed a difficult trial by fire. But Abe?at 52, Japan's youngest postwar Prime Minister?has aced his debut on the world stage, showing decisiveness and deft diplomacy that have heartened his supporters and confounded his critics. Not only has the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader demonstrated his willingness to play hardball with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, he has also displayed a conciliatory side during fence-mending visits to China and South Korea aimed at easing strained relations between Japan and its neighbors. Abe's approval ratings hover at 70%. "I think...
...five and began forming a Japanese equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. The creation of Team Abe is an attempt to shift political power away from Kasumigaseki, where Japan's formidable bureaucrats toil. "There's always been a struggle between the LDP and the ministries," says Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of political science at Nihon University. "Abe came through with a White House-style system of strong leadership that Koizumi couldn't quite achieve...
...create trouble down the road, giving another boost to the Japanese leader's image as a "fighting politician," as his advisers put it. But Abe, like Koizumi, will ultimately be defined by how well he can manage Japan's recovering economy, solve the government's fiscal woes and ensure LDP dominance at the polls. Dealing with a nuclear crisis may be the easy part...
...TIME's cover asked, "Who is Shinzo Abe?" [Sept. 18]. The answer was beside the point, for all the difference that would make. Since Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is an unopposable force, the prime ministerial race was virtually uncontested. After perusing a menu of populist issues, Abe championed the Japanese abductees of North Korea very late in the day. The LDP has chosen to turn a blind eye to so many other problems that nobody could pretend that he and his fellow parliamentarians are not completely calculating in what causes they address. If that were not so, real...
...Even if next year's elections go well, Abe will still, to an extent, be surveying a landscape not of his making. The fractured LDP, the half-finished economic reforms, the deep divisions over Yasukuni, the uncertainty over the military's role?all these flow from the Koizumi years. But there is a role to play for the person who makes sense of what a predecessor started. Junji Higashi, a legislator with the New Komeito party who is close to Koizumi, says the outgoing Prime Minister loves to compare himself to Nobunaga Oda, the revolutionary warlord who all but conquered...