ETERNAL SUNSHINE FOR JAPAN?
Tim Kelly
Forbes, September 16, 2009
Leaving his house on Wednesday morning ahead of a parliamentary session that would anoint him as prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama remarked on the clear, warm weather that had rolled in after a downpour the night before.
It symbolized, he said after a pause, the future of endless sunshine that he wants to create for Japan.
Later, barely able to hold back a smile, Hatoyama bowed to lawmakers in the nation's parliament's lower house after 327 of the chamber's 480 members voted for him as prime minister. It was a high point for him as the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the political group he helped create from a disparate band of opposition groups in 1998.
Hatoyama's appointment as Japan's top politician represents a tectonic shift in the nation's political landscape. For half a century one group, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), held sway. But in a general election last month an electorate stung by the global downturn and fed up with inept government and a suffocating bureaucracy handed the ruling clique its worst defeat ever. Japan's citizens picked Hatoyama's party to deliver change.
Starting with his appointment Wednesday, that's exactly what the populist politician has to do to keep the people on his side. Hatoyama must make good on a bunch of promises that his party came up with to win over millions of voters at election time.
At the top of that woo-list is a $290 child benefit, which would make a family with four kids more than $1,000 better off a month. The DPJ also promised farmers more than $10 billion in income subsidies. For drivers, the party vowed to create free express highways and put an end to an unpopular gasoline tax used to fund new road building.
Forbes, September 16, 2009
Leaving his house on Wednesday morning ahead of a parliamentary session that would anoint him as prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama remarked on the clear, warm weather that had rolled in after a downpour the night before.
It symbolized, he said after a pause, the future of endless sunshine that he wants to create for Japan.
Later, barely able to hold back a smile, Hatoyama bowed to lawmakers in the nation's parliament's lower house after 327 of the chamber's 480 members voted for him as prime minister. It was a high point for him as the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the political group he helped create from a disparate band of opposition groups in 1998.
Hatoyama's appointment as Japan's top politician represents a tectonic shift in the nation's political landscape. For half a century one group, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), held sway. But in a general election last month an electorate stung by the global downturn and fed up with inept government and a suffocating bureaucracy handed the ruling clique its worst defeat ever. Japan's citizens picked Hatoyama's party to deliver change.
Starting with his appointment Wednesday, that's exactly what the populist politician has to do to keep the people on his side. Hatoyama must make good on a bunch of promises that his party came up with to win over millions of voters at election time.
At the top of that woo-list is a $290 child benefit, which would make a family with four kids more than $1,000 better off a month. The DPJ also promised farmers more than $10 billion in income subsidies. For drivers, the party vowed to create free express highways and put an end to an unpopular gasoline tax used to fund new road building.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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