Word: ldp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hard to argue that the LDP's performance of late has been anything but miserable. Each of the three leaders since Koizumi - Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Aso, has seemed less impressive than the last. Last month, Aso's Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, was forced to resign after appearing to be drunk (he said he was suffering the after-effects of cold medication) at a press conference during an important international meeting. "Typically recessions were good for the LDP," says Jesper Koll, president and CEO of Tantallon Research Japan, "but this time around it is sort of pathetic. The government...
...Ozawa said that he was "very surprised" by the arrest, and that the case involved merely "errors in the statement of political fundraising records" of the sort that in the past required only a "kind of correction." The investigation has since widened to include alleged donations from Nishimatsu to LDP politicians, but the main focus so far has been on the DPJ. Ozawa says he will not step down from the party chairmanship; nonetheless, a few days after the arrest was made public, three newspaper polls found a majority of respondents thinking that he should...
...view taken of his alleged role in the Nishimatsu scandal illuminates the paradox of Ozawa's place in Japanese politics. He is at one and the same time the single most radical critic of the Japanese postwar political establishment (it was his decision to bolt the LDP in 1993 that led to its only period out of office) and a supreme exemplar...
...traditional politician "focused on bringing home the bacon" to his constituency in Iwate prefecture in northeastern Honshu. His mentors include both Kakuei Tanaka, Prime Minister from 1972 to 1974, who treated Ozawa like a son and arranged his marriage, and Shin Kanemaru, who served as Deputy Prime Minister and LDP vice president. Both were legendary political fixers, as was Ozawa before he left the party; both were eventually mired in corruption scandals. When Japan was riding high in the 1980s, commentators liked to say that it had a "first-rate economy and third-rate politics." Like...
...fundamental change to the current system in which the government is led primarily by the bureaucracy, and we have to replace it with the government under which the politicians will take the lead to formulate policies and execute those policies under their own responsibility." His contempt for the present LDP government was something to see. Since some politicians in the "ruling camp" are "totally dependent on the bureaucrats," he said, "they have nothing...