http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hatoyama/images/actions/200911/13usa1.jpg
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/Yukio-Hatoyama-001.jpg
Just few days before my exchange program began, a huge event occurred in Japan. The national elections took place on the 30th of August. This year, especially, was interesting rather than the Liberal Democratic Party that ruled Japan for the last half-century winning, the Democratic Party won. On the 16th of September, Mr. Yukio Hatoyama from the Democratic Party was elected as the prime minister of Japan. This election has been radical for Japan because it changed from one ruling party to another showing peoples’ views and their involvement. The prime minister said: “"This has been a revolutionary election; the people have shown the courage to take politics into their own hands." (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/yukio_hatoyama/index.html) However, just a few months after the elections, my friends that I have gotten to know were talking about their disappointment regarding the new prime minister. To explain, one of the fundamental parts of the new party’s campaign was about relocating the American Marine Base on the Island of Okinawa; however, when Obama came to visit Japan, Hatoyama did not mention Japan’s wish to renegotiate this deal with Washington. And so people were very disappointed and they thought that this issue was not as important for the new Prime Minister as he had claimed earlier. Furthermore, three months after the elections, Hatoyama got into a donation scandal where he has been accused of falsifying financial statements. He is said to have been taking more money than the law allows the candidates to and putting them under anonymous donations. This, in Japan, is considered as a major illegal action, and can especially hurt his credibility as a leader. The prime minister has been apologizing and saying that he didn’t know of these falsified statements. Yet, Japanese people say that they were dissatisfied with Hatoyama’s opaque explanation regarding on this issue. This has lead the public to think that the new prime minister might not be qualified for his new statues, and additionally hurting the new ruling party. Thus the question that arises is if the Democratic Party keeps on deceiving the public, is Japan looking for a power change again to the Liberal Democratic Party in the next election?
Are these really your own original photos?
ReplyDeleteAll who thought they were getting a new government seems to have forgot that most of these DPJ politicians once were members of the LDP. And the ideology of these two parties is really not so different. Thus we seem to be encountering the same old same old despite a "new" government. Sound familiar? Perhaps the same can be said about another certain country that had its hopes pinned on "change."