Ozawa To Quit

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: DPJ head Ozawa to quit
Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa on Monday expressed his intention to step down as party head to take responsibility for the political funds scandal involving Nishimatsu Construction Co., party sources said. Ozawa reportedly conveyed his intention to DPJ executives, according to the sources. He said he decided to step down because of his strong desire that the DPJ win the next House of Representatives election. Ozawa was to hold a press conference in the evening. Party Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama and Vice President Katsuya Okada are considered strong candidates to succeed Ozawa...more...

[canman]

I know a lot of people didn't like him, but I felt he was the person who could dethrone the LDP. But this current scandal has ended his career, and the DPJ will recycle one of their retreads, and the LDP will win the next election. I wish they could find some new charismatic politician to fill the role. There is a guy up here in Aomori, he belongs to the upper house, but a relaly cool guy. He lived and worked in Australia for 10 years and speaks English fluently, albeit with a slight Aussie accent. But he is a mover and a shaker, give him a chance DPJ! His name is Koji Hirayama.

[omae mona]

One big question (at least, I think it's still a question) is why he waited so long to resign, leaving the party still stinking of the scandal 2 months closer to the elections. I suppose probably it had to do with getting things lined up inside the party to make sure the successor would be who he wants it to be.

I wonder if this is bad for the DPJ at this point, leaving them leaderless. Or maybe it's good because it removes the only part of the LDP platform that was getting any traction, namely the idea that Ozawa sucks. What will the LDP campaign on now that he's gone?

[Doctor Stop]

Party Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama and Vice President Katsuya Okada are considered strong candidates to succeed Ozawa.

Ozawa, Hatoyama and Okada are all ex-LDP. Any bets on who the LDP have already designated as the designated loser in the next fixed election?

[sublight]

Live by the outrage, die by the outrage. If he hadn't immediately reacted to every single LDP scandal by demanding resignations, he might have had some other recourse when his own house was found to be in disorder.

It's too bad, the DJP needs a strong leader right now.

[Doctor Stop]

It's too bad, the DJP needs a strong leader right now.

One of their problems is that the DJP is full of LDP rejects who left or were kicked out for some reason.

The whole idea of a strong leader, that is a leader that isn't just strong at working backroom deals, is foreign to Japan. The country's produced very, very few visible strong leaders.

[Saru Paradise]

In developed countries, I generally thought the idea was to hold dirt on the other party for leverage in tight situations, gaining some sort of benefits for what you want, but keeping the image of a government you can have faith in out there for the general public.

Why is it that in this country, they shoot each other down making everyone (rightfully) believe and know that the politicians are all corrupt opportunistic bastards?

What type of mucked up system has an obviously incompetent scumbag like Aso gain popularity solely because he's less corrupt than another incompetent scumbag like Aso, especially when everyone knows that Aso was the one who called for the dirt on Ozawa to be investigated?

It's like MAD (mutually assured destruction), only the other side doesn't have the balls to push their button. If they'd at least all release the dirt they had on everyone else, they could clear house and actually have people search for competent officials who aren't as likely to take bribes.

The bureaucrats would never stand for that though, eh?

[Greji]

Party Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama and Vice President Katsuya Okada are considered strong candidates to succeed Ozawa...more...

Hatoyama said yesterday that he wants to quit. No formal announcement, but if he does, it will really get interesting. Standby for another 156 years of LDP supervision.....

[Doctor Stop]

Hatoyama's family is all LDP.

His father was the first LDP PM, and part of a plot to assassinate current PM Aso's grandfather. His wingnut brother is currently a LDP minister and the guy behind the airport fingerprinting. He also claimed that Al-Qaida friend-of-a-friend tipped him off on the Bali bombing.

[sublight]

In developed countries, I generally thought the idea was to hold dirt on the other party for leverage in tight situations, gaining some sort of benefits for what you want, but keeping the image of a government you can have faith in out there for the general public.

Why is it that in this country, they shoot each other down making everyone (rightfully) believe and know that the politicians are all corrupt opportunistic bastards?

What type of mucked up system has an obviously incompetent scumbag like Aso gain popularity solely because he's less corrupt than another incompetent scumbag like Aso, especially when everyone knows that Aso was the one who called for the dirt on Ozawa to be investigated?

In most countries, popularity with voters is considered a leading, if not the top, priority. Here, it takes such a distant backseat to currying favor within your party, jockeying for position within the particular faction of your party that you aligned with (or more frequently, that your father aligned with when he was in the parliament) and building lucrative contacts with contractors for cushy post-retirement non-jobs, that I don't think many of them even give a second thought to election strategy. With the proportional representation system that allows parties to pick who will serve where after the elections are held, once you have enough influence in your party you're pretty much guaranteed a seat even if nobody votes for you.

[Catoneinutica]

I stopped reading the "Observing Japan" blog by super-prolix fatuity-peddler Tobias Harris last December when he wrote:

[INDENT][INDENT]
Rarely have I encountered someone who offers a causal mechanism to explain how the LDP will escape the reaper this time. The argument is usually presented as the simple assertion that the LDP has survived to the present day, so it will continue to survive. This argument is logically flawed. The LDP's survival in the past, despite defections and internal divisions, tells us nothing about whether the LDP will survive in the future...

It's possible that I'm wrong. Like a good social scientist, I'm willing to accept the possibility that I'm mistaken, that my assumptions are faulty. In fact, my theory can be easily falsified: if the LDP remains in power after the next election and (presumably) remains united, I've clearly missed something, at which point it will be necessary to figure out precisely what was missing.[/INDENT][/INDENT]

http://www.observingjapan.com/2008/12/can-ldp-save-itself.html

Start figurin', Tobe! The LDP is perennially on the brink of being booted from power...sometime in the future. As to a "causal mechanism to explain how the LDP will escape the reaper this time," I'll offer one: inertia. Fifty-four years of virtually uninterrupted rule makes for a lot of it.

[Catoneinutica]

Hatoyama's family is all LDP.

His father was the first LDP PM, and part of a plot to assassinate current PM Aso's grandfather. His wingnut brother is currently a LDP minister and the guy behind the airport fingerprinting. He also claimed that Al-Qaida friend-of-a-friend tipped him off on the Bali bombing.

And he called Kusanagi a "bastard." Project much?

[Catoneinutica]

[IkemenTommy]

Interesting how all this talk about quitting, Ozawa is still around.. at least the last time I checked the TV. Despite all the suspicious money laundering happening right now that points all the fingers at Ozawa, his butt puppet Rep. Ishikawa took the fall and just got arrested. The plots thickens.. dum dum dum.

(Oh yeah, big boss is still free at large )

[Jack]

Reading the title there I thought Maria Ozawa was quitting.

[Adhesive]

Reading the title there I thought Maria Ozawa was quitting.

That would make sense, considering J-pop and JAV is the extent of your knowledge concerning Japan.

[Tsuru]

Reading the title there I thought Maria Ozawa was quitting.

You do realise the chick in your avatar is like 14 years old, right?

[prolly]

i too must shamefully admit i thought this was a maria ozawa thread

[Jack]

That would make sense, considering J-pop and JAV is the extent of your knowledge concerning Japan.

Even that's more than you know about Japan.

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo: Prosecutors set to decide not to indict DPJ's Ozawa over funds Thurs.

Prosecutors are set to decide Thursday not to indict Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa over the alleged falsification of political funds reports, due to insufficient evidence, sources close to the case said. The prosecutors are also expected to decide on what action to take against the three Ozawa aides they arrested. They are expected to indict DPJ House of Representatives member Tomohiro Ishikawa, 36, file an additional charge against Ozawa's secretary Takanori Okubo, 48, and take some action against former secretary Mitsutomo Ikeda, 32, the sources said. Ishikawa is believed to have told investigators that he received Ozawa's consent for the alleged false fund reports, but the probe was apparently unable to establish the concrete involvement of the DPJ kingpin, according to the sources.

Ozawa has stated in questioning by the prosecutors that he entrusted handling of his funds to his aides. The anticipated decisions will wrap up more than a year of investigations into the case. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office questioned Ozawa twice after receiving a criminal complaint from a civic group urging the prosecutors to indict him for allegedly conspiring with his aides to falsify fund reports in connection with a land purchase in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward in 2004. The three aides were arrested last month on suspicion of violating the Political Funds Control Law by failing to record income and expenses related to the land purchase in fund reports of Ozawa's fund management body Rikuzankai.

Ozawa has said he told the investigators that the 400 million yen used for the purchase of the land in October 2004 came from his private assets. But the prosecutors suspect that the 400 million yen included 50 million yen secretly provided by Mizutani Construction Co., a subcontractor on a project to build Isawa Dam in Iwate Prefecture, where Ozawa's constituency is located. Ozawa has denied the allegations. Without stating it in its fund reports, Rikuzankai allegedly received 400 million yen from Ozawa in October 2004 and used 352 million yen of the sum to buy the land in question. It paid 400 million yen back to Ozawa in 2007.