Having fallen 181 seats to 119 seats in the new Diet, the LDP that will face a governing DPJ will be a peculiar party.What I find most striking is that fifty-five of the LDP's winners are hereditary members, constituting 46.5% of the party's new caucus. By comparison, of the DPJ's 308 winners, only thirty-two (10.4%) …
Tag: hereditary Diet members
The LDP’s reformists continue to battle family politics
Surprisingly, given the howls of protest from within the LDP that greeted Suga Yoshihide's proposal to include a ban on hereditary candidates in the party's election manifesto, the LDP appears ready to include restrictions on political inheritances in the manifesto after Suga met with Koga Makoto, the LDP's chief elections strategist, and Ibuki Bunmei, former …
Continue reading The LDP’s reformists continue to battle family politics
Combating Botchan rule
The Japanese political establishment is debating how to combat an infestation that has penetrated Nagata-cho and is allegedly gnawing away at the foundations of Japanese democracy.I'm speaking, of course, of Japan's hereditary politicians, who constitute roughly a quarter of the members of the two houses of the Diet.The debate has grown out of an internal …
Banning hereditary politicians
Koga Makoto, the LDP's chief election strategist, spoke in Fukuoka on Monday, where he suggested that the government might not wait until September 2009 to call an election after all. He noted that the prime minister might instead decide to call an election in early 2009, before the start of the ordinary Diet session, or …
Tobias S. Harris 