Upper and Lower Houses Can’t Agree, so Fukuda Officially Becomes Prime Minister
As with everything else in the past few days, newly-elected LDP President Yasuo Fukuda’s election as Prime Minister of Japan went pretty much exactly as predicted.
The DPJ controls the House of Councillors (the Upper House) and nominated their leader, Ichiro Ozawa, for Prime Minister. The LDP, which still controls the more powerful House of Representatives (the Lower House), nominated their new president. The two sides quickly came to an impasse, which led to a stalemate, which led to Yasuo Fukuda becoming Prime Minister, due to a constitutional provision that grants the power to choose the Prime Minister to the House of Representatives in a situation such as today’s.
The next thing to see will be Fukuda’s full Cabinet line-up, which is not looking very promising so far. Taro Aso has refused a Cabinet post, but, at this point, six of th eight other faction heads are in, which has cause DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama to call the Fukuda administration a return to the LDP’s bad old days. At this point, it’s hard to disagree.
More, much, much more, to come in the soon-to-be release post-election edition of Seijigiri, with guest Adam Richards.
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