Masuzoe Yoichi, the upper house member who I recently listed as the obvious front runner in the race to replace Aso Taro as LDP president, said Wednesday that he would not seek the position.Masuzoe cited his responsibility as a member of the ruling cabinet for the party's defeat as his reason for not seeking the …
Tag: post Aso
The LDP has an election date
Aso Taro has resigned his post as party president and the LDP has scheduled its party leadership for four weeks from today, 28 September. The campaign for the party presidency will officially begin ten days earlier, on 18 September, giving the candidates just over two weeks to make their intentions known and then begin traveling …
On the eve of destruction?
The denizens of Tokyo have started voting for representatives to the metropolitan assembly, and the LDP is already explaining away a defeat. Turnout may be up compared with 2005, which, as Jun Okumura notes, bodes ill for the LDP and Komeitō.Appearing on TV Saturday, Hosoda Hiroyuki, the LDP secretary general, said that the election will …
Koike versus the "soft liners"
On Tuesday, Koike Yuriko, former defense minister and aspirant to the LDP presidency, announced her resignation as chair of the LDP's special committee on base countermeasures.She told the media that her resignation was intended as a protest against the decision to soften the language on preemption in the LDP Policy Research Council's defense division 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 …
Aso limps on
The Aso government won a small victory on Friday when the lower house passed the 2009 budget, ensuring that even if the upper house does not act on it the budget will pass into law before the start of the new fiscal year.The discussion will now unavoidably shift to the timing of the general election. …
Anything goes
As Prime Minister Aso Taro prepares to travel to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama, he leaves behind a political situation that is nothing short of chaos.Asahi has published a snap poll that found that 71% of respondents — and 76% of self-described independents among the respondents — believe that Aso should resign immediately, …
Tobias S. Harris 