During the fight over the MSDF refueling mission and at other junctures in the months since the DPJ took control of the HC, the DPJ has threatened to use its "censure motion" card. It has yet to play it, whether against Prime Minister Fukuda or one of his cabinet ministers.It is still unknown what will …
Continue reading The unknown but limited power of the censure motion
Speaking Monday at a party held by the Kanagawa chapter of the LDP, Koizumi Junichiro changed his position on the timing of a general election.He had previously stated that he shared the LDP leadership's view that an early election is unnecessary, but Monday he warned that an election is coming soon — and LDP members …
Yamamoto Ichita, who is a far more prolific blogger than I despite (because of?) his membership in the House of Councillors (I've just added his blog to the blogroll after linking to him for months), lays out the reasons why the government must use the HR supermajority to reintroduce the temporary tax.His four reasons are: …
Today is the second anniversary of Ozawa Ichiro's election as head of the DPJ.Mr. Ozawa marked the occasion with appearances on several Sunday political talk shows, on which he assessed the political situation and issued his latest call for a hasty general election. He said that an election should be held in advance of the …
Aso Taro continues to position himself as the LDP's savior in a rapidly approaching post-Fukuda period — in MTC's extended (and excellent) Fukuda-as-currency analogy, Mr. Aso is hoping that he is the best store of value in a chaotic environment.His latest move is to come out on behalf of the restoration of the temporary tax …
I have held off from commenting on the murder of Takahashi Masaaki, a taxi driver in Yokosuka by Olatunbosun Ugbogu, a deserter from the US Navy because the details were murky.But now that Ugbogu is in Japanese custody and US Navy and State Department officials have made their initial apologies, including a visit by Rear …
On Thursday morning the LDP's headquarters for the promotion of administrative reform approved an administrative reform plan and passed it along to the cabinet. The cabinet approved it Friday morning and will submit it to the Diet later today.The plan still calls for a new cabinet personnel agency and restrictions on direct contact between politicians …
Continue reading The government serves up a weak adminstrative reform bill
My (optimistic) assessment of the current political situation is in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal Asia.You can read it here.
The BBC has released its annual survey of global attitudes, revealing once again that Japan is one of the most positively rated countries among those surveyed.Jun Okumura provides a good wrap-up of the report's findings on Japan here.As in years past, the survey found that Japan is viewed favorably in just about every country surveyed …
It's been less than a week since Prime Minister Fukuda made his eleventh hour appeal to the DPJ to cooperate in the gasoline tax/road construction dispute, discarding much of the road tribe's program in the process and leading Kono Taro to remark (noted here) that the young reformers had gone "from opposition forces to imperial …
Tobias S. Harris 