Word: parliament
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Whether it was just a minor rumble or a major tremor on the political Richter scale, last week's vote for the upper house of Japan's parliament was certainly a shock to the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the country for 34 years. In the most devastating setback in its history, the L.D.P. claimed only 36 of the 126 seats up for grabs, while the underdog Japan Socialist Party took 46. Declared exultant J.S.P. leader Takako Doi: "I truly felt the mountains moving...
...Socialists force elections in the parliament's lower house before next year, as they hope to do, there is also the remote possibility that for the first time in party history, the L.D.P. will be banished to the back benches. To avert that prospect, warns L.D.P. legislator Shirakawa, "we need to find the reasons for our losses and then show the people that we have corrected them." That is a tall order to fill, and the L.D.P. has no time to lose...
...Polish bishops agreed to the diplomatic ties only because Poland's Parliament on May 17 passed laws allowing religious freedoms that are unprecedented in the Communist world. Dozens of new legal provisions now guarantee the rights of Catholicism and other faiths, encompassing such matters as the church's right to own property, build churches, publish freely and operate charities. The Polish church will also receive compensation for buildings the Communists seized in the 1950s, and members of the clergy are guaranteed pensions. Most observers believed the timing of the decision strongly signaled Pope John Paul's approval of the events...
Party stewards counted the votes once, then tallied them three more times. When the result was finally announced to the 544 Deputies in the hushed Parliament last week, the reason for all the counting became clear. General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the leader of Poland's Communist Party, had won the country's presidency with just a single vote to spare...
...elections cost the LDP control of the upper house of the Japanese parliament and brought down Prime Minister Sousuke Uno. Before the setback, the party had held a monopoly on government power in Japan since...