Word: ldp
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...economic might, the end had come with a whimper. But even stranger was the reason Abe gave during a Sept. 12 speech announcing his intent to step down as Japan's leader. In his tumultuous yearlong tenure, Abe weathered a stunning parliamentary defeat for his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition, the resignations of four of his Cabinet members, the suicide of his corruption-tainted Agriculture Minister and a scandal over the mishandling of more than 50 million pension-fund accounts. None of these crises, Abe maintained, directly prompted his plans to depart once the LDP chooses...
...cats were profiting from the recovery. On July 29, the public delivered its verdict at the polls. For the first time in 52 years, opposition forces led by Ozawa's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) wrested control of the Upper House of the Diet, Japan's parliament, from the LDP. The drubbing echoed a lesson that former U.S. President George H.W. Bush learned back in 1992 when he was booted from office. "It's the economy, stupid," says Richard Katz, the New York-based editor of the Oriental Economist Report. "Up until his very last day, Abe showed just...
...biggest loser is likely to be the LDP itself, the party that has dominated Japan for nearly the entire postwar era. Though it holds, along with coalition partners, a two-thirds majority in the Diet's Lower House, and new elections aren't scheduled until Sept. 2009, sagging public support means that the next Prime Minister will almost certainly be forced to call early polls. Barring a new leader who can engineer a miracle turnaround - something none of the well-worn LDP candidates seem capable of - the party could well be tossed out of government altogether. "Abe has thrown...
More broadly, Abe's resignation spells the end of an attempt among more conservative members of the LDP to loosen the bounds of postwar pacifism and forge a true military alliance with the U.S. That change gathered momentum under Abe's popular predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who committed Japanese forces to assisting the U.S. in anti-terror operations - including in Iraq - and made noises about revising Japan's constitutional restrictions on military activity. (Japanese troops are allowed to act only in self-defense.) When he came to power, Abe made constitutional revision one of his top priorities, and kept...
...economy and failing pension system than the war on terror, which was never popular in Japan, and concerns grew that the country had become too close to the U.S. Abe never adjusted his priorities, and he paid the price at the polls. Though he said that the LDP would still fight to renew the Afghanistan bill, insiders have suggested the party may withdraw the bill in the face of opposition from the DPJ and the public. If that happens, Japan will likely return to the arm's-length relationship it had with America for most of the Cold...