Japan's bruised and humiliated opposition party picked a young conservative who wants a more assertive role for Japan's military as its new leader yesterday in a surprise decision aimed at healing the wounds from a crushing parliamentary defeat.
Seiji Maehara, 43, was chosen over charismatic but scandal-tainted veteran Naoto Kan, 58, in a razor-thin 96-94 vote by Democratic Party loyalists at a Tokyo hotel.
First elected to Parliament's lower house in 1993, Maehara gives a new face to a party that saw its standing tumble in last Sunday's election, unraveling impressive gains made in recent years against the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Former party leader Katsuya Okada stepped down on election night to take responsibility for the defeat.
The Democrats were trounced in the Sept. 11 elections by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's LDP. With the Democrats' in the more powerful lower house of parliament dropping to 113 from 175, the polls delayed any hope for a two-party political system in Japan, and cast doubt on the opposition's ability to regroup and challenge again for control.
"The LDP is as dominant as any time in the past," said Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank. "The question now is whether the damage to the DJP is fatal."
Maehara brings the party is a security expert and backer of a more assertive international military role for Japan. He has been designated the party's Defense Agency chief in the Democrats' shadow cabinet.
While Maehara offers the Democrats a new front man, his security views may cause a rift with more dovish members of his own party, some of who defected from the socialists and vehemently oppose the country's dispatch of troops to Iraq and other overseas missions.
"It's a little bit surprising," political analyst Shigenori Okazaki said. "The party has shifted very quickly away from someone who is very experienced toward someone who is young and can show future potential."
If Kan had won, it would have been his third time at the helm of the party he helped form.
The photogenic Kan entered politics in the 1970s as a consumer activist and soared to prominence in 1996 when he exposed a cover-up of an HIV-tainted blood scandal as health minister in a coalition Cabinet. He is considered the leader of the party's left-leaning wing.
At one point, he was Japan's most popular politician until a sex scandal edged him from the party's top position in 1999.
But Kan regained the post and led the party through stunning 2003 lower house elections that boosted the Democrats' ranks to 177 seats from 137, and shook the foundations of the rival LDP with nationwide talk of a legitimate two-party system. Kan resigned again last year, however, after admitting he'd missed payments into the national pension system for 10 months in the 1990s when he was health and welfare minister. That scandal threw the Democrats into disarray just two months before last year's upper house elections.
Okada was chosen to replace Kan after emerging as the only candidate for the job.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion