Word: premier
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Crisis. Chirac cannot go too far in opposing Giscard without triggering a confrontation that would only weaken the government majority and benefit the left. Moreover, much of the pending legislation in the Assembly was hatched while Chirac was still Premier; this blunts any credible Gaullist opposition to these measures. But the Gaullists will stay arms-length from the President from now on. They may oppose direct elections to a European parliament and object to ratifying the International Monetary Fund accords reached last January in Jamaica, an agreement they view as symptomatic of Giscard's shift to supranationalism. Beyond these...
...chewed his way through France's political structure at a frenzied pace. At 30, after graduation from France's elite civil service academy, L'Ecole Nationale d'Administration, he won a position on the staff of Georges Pompidou, then Charles de Gaulle's Premier. In the next decade he held five ministerial posts, and at 41 became the youngest Premier in the history of the Fifth Republic. Now, at 44, he has picked up the fallen banner-and lofty rhetoric-of le grand Charles himself...
...first such maneuver may be the resignation of Premier Miki. Soon after the election, one Miki aide asked rhetorically, "Why do we admire cherry blossoms so much? Because they fall so quickly. When they're still beautiful, still pure, the aesthetic is right. That's why Miki will resign." Miki himself told an associate, "The Japanese sense of grace will not permit me to stay." With that, he withdrew for the weekend to his mountain villa 80 miles west of Tokyo to put the final touches on what is expected to be an unusual combination: an offer...
Tight-lipped and haggard, Japan's Premier Takeo Miki waded into the TV glare to concede defeat. Acknowledging an "unprecedented crisis of the postwar years," Miki called on his faction-torn Liberal Democratic Party to "accept frankly the judgment of the people" and seek "reform and change." The L.D.P. has little choice. In an election upset with far-ranging implications, 57 million Japanese voters last week dealt the country's ruling party its worst drubbing since it was formed...
Miki's attitude typifies his defiance of L.D.P. tradition, a quality that has irritated, affronted and finally outraged party stalwarts. Deceptively mild-mannered, Miki, 69, displayed samurai nerve all year, pressing the Lockheed investigation to the indictment of 19 top businessmen and politicians, including his predecessor as Premier, Kakuei Tanaka. Even as he was acclaimed the "Mr. Clean" of Japanese politics, party leaders tried to dump him for exposing L.D.P. improprieties. Backed in the struggle by public opinion and the press, Miki had hoped for vindication at the polls...