Word: ldp
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...stems from elections last summer in which members of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-the country's main opposition party-won a surprise majority of seats in the Diet's upper house. The results were a sea-change for Japanese politics. For five decades, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had complete control of the Diet and Japan's administration. But while some hailed the DPJ triumph as a much-needed step toward a true two-party democracy in Japan, in reality the power shift has been anything but cathartic. Since he took over as Prime Minister on September...
...same might be said of Japan's parliament, which has been plagued by squabbling between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP), which controls the lower house, and the DPJ, whose members won a surprise majority in the upper house in elections last July. With Fukui's departure looming, politicians have been unable to reach agreement on a successor, with some DPJ lawmakers saying they prefer former deputy Central Bank governor Yutaka Yamaguchi. Business leader Mikio Wakatsuki, chairman of AXA Life Insurance of Japan, told reporters this week that it was "a national disgrace that this issue remains unresolved...
...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...
...campaign pegged the election as a battle between the old and the new LDP; the party decided that a return to the old faction-driven politics of compromise was what it needed. Whether the old ways can provide solutions to Japan's problems, though, remains to be seen; with Fukuda still unclear on how he intends to solve Japan's domestic economic issues, the LDP has until next spring's general elections to prove it can answer to the country's needs...