The race to succeed Aso Taro as LDP president begins today, with three candidates vying for the unenviable task of fixing a broken Liberal Democratic Party.Surprisingly the race includes none of the candidates who Aso defeated to win the job last year: Ishiba Shigeru, despite being perhaps the most enthusiastic of the potential candidates, backed …
Tag: Kono Taro
Tax rebellion averted?
The LDP appears to have forged a truce in the incipient war over writing the timing of a consumption tax increase into law.In the best LDP tradition, the LDP leadership has decided to muddle the message of the bill. The LDP has produced a draft with language that calls for implementing "essential legislative measures by …
Fukuda, a glutton for punishment
On Tuesday, at the same press conference where he complained about the stress of the job, Prime Minister Fukuda made a statement guaranteed to ensure that his stress will increase inexorably."Since [the consumption tax rate] is only 5%, we are burdened with a budget deficit. We must decide — this is an extremely important period. …
Bait and switch
The HR passed the road construction bill a second time on Tuesday afternoon, as scheduled. Despite rumors to the contrary, there was no rebellion. Kono Taro and his comrades voted with the government, in the process illustrating why the much-anticipated political realignment has yet to occur: for all the discontent voiced by backbenchers about the …
The imperial guard coalesces
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 