The dissolution of the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Asō Tarō tells us, is not far off.It cannot come soon enough. Each day brings more news of Asō's loosening grasp on his own party. Yomiuri reports that from Monday, the effort to replace the prime minister will take on a new urgency. The movement to …
Tag: 2009 general election
The DPJ faces the bureaucracy
With the DPJ's prospects on the rise and the LDP mired in what may be terminal disarray, the DPJ is receiving greater scrutiny when it comes to how the party will govern should it take power.That, after all, is what this election is about: if seiken kotai [regime change], the DPJ's longtime mantra is to …
From crisis to crisis
For a government that has at various times tried to distinguish itself as putting policy before politics, the Asō government now closely resembles an immunocompromised patient desperately trying to fend off opportunistic infections, with the infections being political disorder within the LDP. It bears noting that the DPJ has played little or no role in …
Time for a mercy killing
After a brief period of buoyancy, the bottom has finally fallen out of the Asō government.In addition to the drops below twenty percent approval in the Mainichi and Kyodo polls, the government's approval rating dropped 8.7% to 17.5% in the Sankei poll, with its disapproval rating rising ten points to 70.6%, a poll in which …
These are the hollow men
"Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion" — T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"The belabored departure of Hatoyama Kunio — captured well with a quote from a more contemporary poet at Shisaku — and now the third straight defeat of an LDP candidate in a prominent mayoral election suggest that what little remained …
Playing games
After consultations among the governing parties, the Aso government has extended the current session of the Diet for fifty-five days, with 28 July the final day of the marathon session.Ostensibly, the government wants time to pass the supplementary budget-related bills and the anti-piracy bill. But, as Asahi reports, the government only needs to wait until …
The DPJ bets on Hatoyama
As became clear in the days before the DPJ's Diet members met Saturday to elect a party leader to replace Ozawa Ichiro, Hatoyama Yukio, one of the founders of the Democratic Party of Japan, has once again been selected to serve as party president. He received 124 votes to Okada Katsuya's 95 votes, with, as …
The short race to pick Ozawa’s replacement
The campaign to replace Ozawa Ichiro as DPJ president quickly turned into a race between Okada Katsuya and Hatoyama Yukio, who have until Sunday to convince the DPJ's upper and lower house members of their merits to serve as the face of the party in the forthcoming general election.Uesugi Takashi, writing in Shukan Daiyamondo, argues …
Has Aso made up his mind about an election?
In recent days Komeito has upped the intensity of its disapproval of the government's calling a general election following the passage of its proposed stimulus package.The LDP's junior partner is still concerned about an overlap between the general election and the Tokyo prefectural assembly election in July, but it has added a new argument against …
Continue reading Has Aso made up his mind about an election?
The LDP’s window of opportunity
The Aso government and the LDP, confident due to polling numbers trending in their favor, are publicly mulling the timing of the next general election, raising the possibility that the government will not wait until the end of the current Diet term in September before calling an election.Sankei reports that members of Aso Taro's cabinet …
Tobias S. Harris 