Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...September, the DPJ will take over as the official ruling party, with the Diet's election of Hatoyama as Prime Minister and the appointment of ministers. That leaves 100 days for the new administration to draft a budget for the next fiscal year that doesn't increase the national deficit - now at 180% of GDP - but still holds to its costly election-year pledges. If the national budget is not prepared by the end of the year, the green shoots of economic growth could...
...that there's no personnel overhaul with a change in administration. Japanese bureaucrats wield more power - sometimes even more than elected officials - and have long called the shots on everything from budget formulation to foreign policy. The DPJ has vowed to expand the power of the Prime Minister's office and the Cabinet, something pursued by previous Prime Ministers. But it's a delicate job, and one that could easily go sour. (See pictures of Japan in 1989 and Japan...
...plans to appoint 100 ruling politicians to oversee ministries. In order to transfer more power to the Cabinet - and away from ministry bureaucrats - the DPJ will also replace the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, an advisory group to the Prime Minister's office set up in 2001, with a National Strategy Bureau (NSB) reporting to the Prime Minister. The NSB will be key in budget and diplomatic-policy formulation. The DPJ also wants to eliminate amakudari, or descent from heaven, which places retired bureaucrats in plush jobs. "This is a new way of doing business in this country," says...
...free-trade agreements. "If Japan accepts more agricultural imports, then it will have closer relations and trade volume will rise." Kanno says agricultural reform has the potential to have more of an impact than the overhaul of Japan's vast and costly postal system, a pet reform of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi...
...Scottish document in particular could cause grief for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who insists that Britain had nothing to do with al-Megrahi's release. By contrast, the document, the minutes of a March 2009 meeting between Libyan and Scottish officials, says a Libyan minister recounted being told by British Foreign Minister Bill Rammell "that neither the prime minister [Brown] nor the foreign secretary [David Miliband] would want Mr. Megrahi to pass away in prison, but the decision on transfer lies in the hands of the Scottish ministers." If the critically ill al-Megrahi died in jail, the Libyan minister...