Word: ldp
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...Junichiro Koizumi is a career politician and a third-generation LDP man, the grandson of a former head of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and a former minister of Health and Welfare under the man he beat out in this election, Ryutaro Hashimoto. Yet Koizumi ran for prime minister in 1995 without support from the party faithful. He has wavy hair, fiery rhetoric, an ex-wife - not common in Japanese politics - and what seems to be a genuine passion for just the kind of free-market, tough-medicine reforms that Japan desperately needs after ten years in the economic...
Junichiro Koizumi is set to be Japan's next prime minister after shaking up the creaky but formidable Liberal Democratic party machinery with what in Japan passes for a populist revolt. The 59-year-old with tousled hair and a fondness for rock music promises to revamp the LDP, pack his cabinet with fresh faces, force some bitter medicine on Japan's ailing banks and - if necessary - send Japan into recessionary shock in order to save...
...Frank Gibney: Well, he's definitely not the answer to all Japan's problems. It's certainly a hopeful sign that he comes in with such resounding public support. But if Koizumi is a rebel, he's still an old-line LDP guy. And no matter how committed he is to reforming the LDP, he's still dealing with the same party guys who have chosen prime ministers for so long - and made the post pretty much a revolving door...
...that could make reform somewhat easier. But he's got to be able to do what few Japanese prime ministers even attempt to do these days: take his case to the Japanese people, explain what needs to be done, and get their support - and enough support to overwhelm the LDP's inherent resistance to change...
...enhanced his reputation as a calculating dealmaker. His critics describe him as Machiavellian, willing to break bread with anyone if it furthers his cause. In 1998, when Obuchi was having trouble holding together a fragile multi-party coalition, Nonaka approached an arch-enemy, Ichiro Ozawa, whose defection from the LDP in 1993 ushered the party out of power for the only time since its inception in 1955. Nonaka had called Ozawa a "devil" for that insult. But he went to Ozawa, hat in hand, and persuaded him to rejoin Obuchi's coalition. Once the relationship was cemented, he made sure...