Shinzō Abe
Shinzō Abe is a Japanese politician serving as Prime Minister of Japan and Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party since 2012. He served as Prime Minister from 2006 to 2007 and Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006. In 2019, Abe succeeded Shigeru Yoshida as the second-longest serving Prime Minister in post-war Japan and the fourth-longest serving PM in Japanese history. Abe comes from a politically prominent family and was first elected Prime Minister by a special session of the National Diet in September 2006. Aged 52, he became Japan's youngest post-war Prime Minister and the first to have been born after World War II. Abe resigned on 12 September 2007 for health reasons after his party lost the House of Councillors election that year, he was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, the first in a series of five Prime Ministers who failed to retain office for more than sixteen months. Abe staged a political comeback, on 26 September 2012 he defeated former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba for the LDP presidency.
Following the LDP's landslide victory in the 2012 general election, he became the first former Prime Minister to return to the office since Shigeru Yoshida in 1948. He was re-elected in the 2014 general election, retaining his two-thirds majority with coalition partner Komeito, again in the 2017 general election. Abe is a conservative whom political commentators have described as a right-wing nationalist, he is a member of the revisionist Nippon Kaigi and holds revisionist views on Japanese history, including denying the role of government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II, a position which has created tension with neighboring South Korea. He is considered a hard-liner with respect to North Korea, advocates revising Article 9 of the pacifist constitution to permit Japan to maintain military forces. Abe is known internationally for his government's economic policies, nicknamed Abenomics, which pursue monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, structural reforms. Shinzō Abe was born to a politically prominent family.
His family is from Yamaguchi Prefecture, Abe's registered residence is Nagato, where his grandfather was born. His grandfather, Kan Abe, father, Shintaro Abe, were both politicians, his great-great-grandfather, the Viscount Yoshimasa Ōshima served as General in the Imperial Japanese Army. Abe's mother, Yoko Kishi, is the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Kishi had been a member of the Tōjō Cabinet during the Second World War. Since GHQ's policy changed and became more anti-communist, Kishi was released from Sugamo Prison, established the Japan Democratic Party. In his book Utsukushii Kuni e, Abe wrote, "Some people used to point to my grandfather as a'Class-A war criminal suspect', I felt strong repulsion; because of that experience, I may have become attached to'conservatism', on the contrary."In 1955, Shigeru Yoshida's Liberal Party and Kishi's Democratic Party merged as an anti-leftist coalition and was reestablished as the LDP. Abe attended Seikei Junior High School and Seikei Senior High School.
He studied public administration and graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science from Seikei University in 1977. He moved to the United States and studied public policy at the University of Southern California's School of Public Policy for three semesters. In April 1979, Abe began working for Kobe Steel, he left the company in 1982 and pursued a number of government positions including executive assistant to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, private secretary to the chairperson of the LDP General Council, private secretary to the LDP secretary-general. Shinzō Abe was elected to the first district of Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1993 after his father's death in 1991, winning the most votes of the four Representatives elected in the SNTV multi-member district. In 1999, he became Director of the Social Affairs Division, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Yoshirō Mori and Junichirō Koizumi Cabinets from 2000–2003, after which he was appointed Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Abe is a member of the Mori Faction of the Liberal Democratic Party. This faction is headed by former prime minister Yoshirō Mori. Jun'ichirō Koizumi was a member of the Mori Faction prior to leaving it, as is the custom when accepting a high party post. From 1986 to 1991, Abe's father, headed the same faction; the Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyū-kai has 60 members in the House of Representatives and 26 in the House of Councillors. In 2000, Abe's home and the office of his supporters in Shimonoseki, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, were attacked with molotov cocktails on numerous occasions; the perpetrators were several yakuza members belonging to the Kudo-kai, a Kitakyushu-based designated boryokudan syndicate. The reason for the attacks was believed to be that Abe's local aide refused to give cash to a Shimonoseki real estate broker in return for supporting a Shimonoseki mayoral candidate in 1999. Abe was chief negotiator for the Japanese government on behalf of the families of Japanese abductees taken to North Korea.
As a part of the effort, he accompanied Koizumi to meet Kim Jong‑il in 2002. He gained national popularity when he demanded that Japanese abductees visiting Japan remain, in defiance of North Korea, he was the leader of a project team within the LDP that did a survey on "excessive sexual education and gender-free education". Among the items to which this team raised objections were anatomical dolls and other curricular materials "not taking into consideration the age of children", school policies banning traditional boys' and g
Luis Echeverría
Luis Echeverría Álvarez is a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as the 50th President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. At 97, he is the oldest living former Mexican president, his presidency was characterized by his authoritarian manners, the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre against student protesters, the Dirty War against leftist dissent in the country, the economic crisis that occurred in Mexico towards the end of his term. At the international stage, he attempted to become a leader of the so-called "Third World", the countries that were not aligned with either the US or the USSR during the Cold War. In 2006, he was indicted and ordered under house arrest for his role in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre, but in 2009 the charges against him were dismissed, he was born in Mexico City to Catalina Álvarez. Echeverría joined the faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1947 and taught political theory, he rose in the hierarchy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and became the private secretary of the party president, Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada.
Echeverría served as Interior Secretary under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz from 1964 to 1970. He maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout 1968. Clashes between the government and protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968, a few days before the 1968 Summer Olympics were held in Mexico City. In a separate incident, he ordered the transfer of 15% of the Mexican military to the state of Guerrero to counter guerrilla groups that were operating there. On 22 October 1969, Díaz Ordaz summoned Alfonso Martínez Domínguez—the PRI party president—and other party leaders to his office in Los Pinos to reveal Echeverría as his successor. Martínez Domínguez asked the president if he was sure of his decision and Díaz Ordaz replied, "Why do you ask? It's the most important decision of my life and I've thought it over well." On 8 November 1969, PRI announced Echeverría as the presidential candidate. At one point during his campaign for the presidency, Echeverría called for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the Tlatelolco massacre, an act that enraged President Díaz Ordaz and prompted him to call for Echeverría's resignation.
Although Echeverría was a hardliner in Díaz Ordaz's administration and considered responsible for the Tlatelolco massascre, he became "immediately obsessed with making people forget that he had done it." Echeverría was the first president born after the Mexican Revolution. Once Echeverría inaugurated as president, he embarked on a massive program of populist political and economic reform, nationalizing the mining and electrical industries, redistributing private land in the states of Sinaloa and Sonora to peasants, imposing limits on foreign investment, extending Mexico's patrimonial waters to 370 kilometres. State spending on health, housing construction and food subsidies was significantly increased, the percentage of the population covered by the social security system was doubled, he enraged the left because he did not bring the perpetrators of the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre to justice. He angered the business community with his populist rhetoric and his moves to nationalize industries and redistribute land.
He was unpopular within the file of his own party. After decades of economic growth under his predecessors, the Echeverría administration oversaw an economic crisis during its final months, becoming the first in a series of Presidencies in Mexico that faced severe economic crises during the next two decades. Echeverría was accused of irresponsible government spending, increasing inflation, cronyism, symbolized by appointing his childhood friend and eventual successor, José López Portillo, as Finance Minister as well as by devaluing the peso, from 12.50 pesos per dollar in 1954 to 20 pesos per dollar in late 1976. During his period in office, the country's external debt soared from $6 billion in 1970 to $20 billion in 1976; that caused a gradual loss of prestige in the ruling party, at least in terms of its economic policies, at home and abroad. At the end of his term, Mexico was in a state of economic crisis. On 8 October 1974, Echeverría issued a decree creating the new Mexican states of Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo.
Echeverría nationalized the barbasco industry in the late 1970s. Wild barbasco was the natural source of hormones that were the key component in the contraceptive pill. Nationalization and the creation of the state-run company PROQUIVEMEX came as the importance of Mexico to the industry was waning. During the administration of Echeverría, a new Federal Election Law was approved: Lowered the number of members a party needed to become registered from 75,000 to 65,000 Increased the number of Congress seats chosen according to proportional representation principle from 20 to 25 Introduction of a permanent voting card Established the age of candidacy at 21, from 30. Following the PRI tradition, Echeverría handpicked his successor for the Presidency, chose his Finance Minister and childhood friend, José López Portillo, to be the PRI Presidential candidate for the 1976 elections. Due to a series of events and an internal conflict in the opposition party PA
Miguel de la Madrid
Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as the 52nd President of Mexico from 1982 to 1988. During his presidency, de la Madrid introduced sweeping neoliberal economic policies in Mexico, beginning an era of market-oriented presidents in that country, his administration was criticized for its slow response to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the handling of the controversial 1988 Presidential elections in which the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared winner, amid accusations of electoral fraud. Miguel de la Madrid was born in the city of Colima, Mexico, he was the son of Miguel de la Madrid Castro, a notable lawyer, Alicia Hurtado Oldenbourg. His grandfather was the governor of Colima, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and received a master's degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in the United States.
He worked for the Bank of Mexico and lectured in law at UNAM before he got a position at the Secretariat of Finance in 1965. Between 1970 and 1972, he was employed by Petróleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, after which he held several other bureaucratic posts in the government of Luis Echeverría. In 1979, he was chosen to serve in José López Portillo's cabinet as Secretary of Budget and Planning, replacing Ricardo García Sainz. De la Madrid had no political experience as an elected official prior to becoming the candidate for the PRI. In the assessment of political scientist Jorge G. Castañeda, López Portillo designated De la Madrid as a candidate by elimination, not by choice, that De la Madrid remained in contention as a candidate because he was never the bearer of bad news to the president. Other contenders were David Ibarra; when his candidacy was revealed, his "candidacy was greeted with unusual hostility from some sectors of the political establishment--an indication of the emerging rift between the old políticos and emerging technocrats."
De la Madrid did not run against a strong opposition candidate. His campaign rhetoric emphasized traditional liberal values of representation, strengthening of the legislature and the judiciary. There was massive turnout in the election, for the first time in many years, voting overwhelmingly for De la Madrid. De la Madrid inherited the financial catastrophe from his predecessor. De la Madrid's handling of the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake was his own major misstep; the end of his administration was worse, with his choice of Carlos Salinas de Gortari as his successor, the split in the PRI with the exit of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the government's handling of balloting with election results deemed fraudulent. His administration did have some bright spots, with Mexico's becoming a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1985. Mexico was part of the Contadora process to find a solution of the conflicts in Central America. Unlike previous Mexican leaders, he was a market-oriented president.
Inflation increased on an average of 100% a year and reached to an unprecedented level of 159% in 1987. The underemployment rate soared to 25% during the mid-1980s, income declined, economic growth was erratic since prices rose much faster than incomes. All, a stark reminder of the gross mismanagement and inept policies of his two immediate predecessors the financing of development with excessive overseas borrowing, countered by high internal capital flights; as an immediate reaction to the economic crisis, he first presented the Immediate Economic Reorganization Program and, a couple of months the National Development Plan. Some of the measures proposed were a reduction of public spending, fiscal reforms, a restructuring of the bureaucracy, employment protection. During his presidency, De la Madrid introduced neoliberal economic reforms that encouraged foreign investment, widespread privatization of state-run industries, reduction of tariffs, a process that continued under his successors, which caught the attention of the International Monetary Fund and other international observers.
In January 1986, Mexico entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade following its efforts at reforming and decentralizing its economy. The number of state-owned industries went down from 1,155 in 1982 to 412 in 1988. De la Madrid re-privatized companies, made state-run under his predecessors, he sought better public-private sector relations, but the private sector began backing opposition candidates nonetheless. Given the dire economic circumstances he inherited from his predecessor, he pursued policies of economic austerity, rather than deficit spending. President De la Madrid stated that further democratization of the country was necessary, the political system opened up to greater competition; as other parties showed the potential for their electoral success, his attitude seemed to be hostile to the advance of opposition parties, instead allowing the PRI to maintain near-absolute power of the country.. However, it was during his administration that the opposition National Action Party (a
New Spain
The Viceroyalty of New Spain was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. It covered a huge area that included territories in North America, South America and Oceania, it originated in 1521 after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the main event of the Spanish conquest, which did not properly end until much as its territory continued to grow to the north. It was created on 8 March 1535 as a viceroyalty, the first of four viceroyalties Spain created in the Americas, its first viceroy was Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, the capital of the viceroyalty was Mexico City, established on the ancient Mexico-Tenochtitlan. It included what is now Mexico plus the current U. S. states of California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas and Louisiana. The political organization divided the viceroyalty into captaincies general; the kingdoms were those of New Spain. There were four captaincies: Captaincy General of the Philippines, Captaincy General of Cuba, Captaincy General of Puerto Rico and Captaincy General of Santo Domingo.
These territorial subdivisions had a captain general. In Guatemala, Santo Domingo and Nueva Galicia, these officials were called presiding governors, since they were leading royal audiences. For this reason, these hearings were considered "praetorial." There were two great estates. The most important was the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca, property of Hernán Cortés and his descendants that included a set of vast territories where marquises had civil and criminal jurisdiction, the right to grant land and forests and within which were their main possessions; the other estate was the Duchy of Atlixco, granted in 1708, by King Philip V to José Sarmiento de Valladares, former viceroy of New Spain and married to the Countess of Moctezuma, with civil and criminal jurisdiction over Atlixco, Guachinango and Tula de Allende. King Charles III introduced reforms in the organization of the viceroyalty in 1786, known as Bourbon reforms, which created the intendencias, which allowed to limit, in some way, the viceroy's attributions.
New Spain developed regional divisions, reflecting the impact of climate, indigenous populations, mineral resources. The areas of central and southern Mexico had dense indigenous populations with complex social and economic organization; the northern area of Mexico, a region of nomadic and semi-nomadic indigenous populations, was not conducive to dense settlements, but the discovery of silver in Zacatecas in the 1540s drew settlement there to exploit the mines. Silver mining not only became the engine of the economy of New Spain, but vastly enriched Spain and transformed the global economy. New Spain was the New World terminus of the Philippine trade, making the viceroyalty a vital link between Spain's New World empire and its Asian empire. From the beginning of the 19th century, the viceroyalty fell into crisis, aggravated by the Peninsular War, its direct consequence in the viceroyalty, the political crisis in Mexico in 1808, which ended with the government of viceroy José de Iturrigaray and gave rise to the Conspiracy of Valladolid and the Conspiracy of Querétaro.
This last one was the direct antecedent of the Mexican War of Independence, when concluding in 1821, disintegrated the viceroyalty and gave way to the Mexican Empire, in which Agustín de Iturbide would be crowned. The Kingdom of New Spain was established following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521 as a New World kingdom dependent on the Crown of Castile, since the initial funds for exploration came from Queen Isabella. Although New Spain was a dependency of Spain, it was a kingdom not a colony, subject to the presiding monarch on the Iberian Peninsula; the monarch had sweeping power in the overseas territories,The king possessed not only the sovereign right but the property rights. Every privilege and position, economic political, or religious came from him, it was on this basis that the conquest and government of the New World was achieved. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was established in 1535 in the Kingdom of New Spain, it was the first New World viceroyalty and one of only two in the Spanish empire until the 18th century Bourbon Reforms.
The Spanish Empire comprised the territories in the north overseas'Septentrion', from North America and the Caribbean, to the Philippine and Caroline Islands. At its greatest extent, the Spanish crown claimed on the mainland of
Philippines
The Philippines the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon and Mindanao; the capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east, Malaysia and Indonesia to the south; the Philippines' location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and close to the equator makes the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons, but endows it with abundant natural resources and some of the world's greatest biodiversity. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 km2, according to the Philippines Statistical Authority and the WorldBank and, as of 2015, had a population of at least 100 million.
As of January 2018, it is the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, comprising one of the world's largest diasporas. Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, they were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Malay, Indian and Chinese nations occurred. Various competing maritime states were established under the rule of datus, rajahs and lakans; the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for the Spanish, in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Hispanic colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the first Hispanic settlement in the archipelago was established.
The Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. This resulted in Catholicism becoming the dominant religion. During this time, Manila became the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade connecting Asia with Acapulco in the Americas using Manila galleons; as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the Philippine Revolution followed, which spawned the short-lived First Philippine Republic, followed by the bloody Philippine–American War. The war, as well as the ensuing cholera epidemic, resulted in the deaths of thousands of combatants as well as tens of thousands of civilians. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until after World War II, when the Philippines was recognized as an independent nation. Since the unitary sovereign state has had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a dictatorship by a non-violent revolution; the Philippines is a founding member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the East Asia Summit.
It hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank. The Philippines is considered to be an emerging market and a newly industrialized country, which has an economy transitioning from being based on agriculture to one based more on services and manufacturing. Along with East Timor, the Philippines is one of Southeast Asia's predominantly Christian nations; the Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte and Samar Felipinas after the then-Prince of Asturias; the name Las Islas Filipinas would be used to cover all the islands of the archipelago. Before that became commonplace, other names such as Islas del Poniente and Magellan's name for the islands San Lázaro were used by the Spanish to refer to the islands; the official name of the Philippines has changed several times in the course of its history. During the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic.
From the period of the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War until the Commonwealth period, American colonial authorities referred to the country as the Philippine Islands, a translation of the Spanish name. Since the end of World War II, the official name of the country has been the Republic of the Philippines. Philippines has gained currency as the common name since being the name used in Article VI of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, with or without the definite article. Discovery in 2018 of stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains in Rizal, Kalinga has pushed back evidence of early hominins in the archipelago to as early as 709,000 years. However, the metatarsal of the Callao Man, reliably dated by uranium-series dating to 67,000 years ago remains the oldest human remnant found in the archipelago to date; this distinction belonged to the Tabon Man of Palawan, carbon-dated to around 26,500 years ago. Negritos were among the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, but their first settlement in the Philippines has not been reliably dated.
There are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos. F. Landa Jocano theorizes. Wilhelm Solheim's Island Origin Theory postulates that the peopling of the archipelago transpired via trade networks originating in the Sundaland area around
Ryutaro Hashimoto
Ryutaro Hashimoto was a Japanese politician who served as the 82nd and 83rd Prime Minister of Japan from 11 January 1996 to 30 July 1998. He was the leader of one of the largest factions within the ruling LDP through most of the 1990s and remained a powerful back-room player in Japanese politics until scandal forced him to resign his leadership position in 2004. Disgraced, he chose not to stand in the general election of 2005, retired from politics, he died on 1 July 2006 at a Tokyo hospital. Hashimoto was born on 29 July 1937, in Sōja in Okayama Prefecture, his father, Ryōgo Hashimoto, was a cabinet minister under Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. Following his father's lead, Ryutaro received his degree in political science from Keio University in 1960, was elected to the House of Representatives of Japan in 1963, he moved through the ranks of the Liberal Democratic Party over the next twenty years, landing a spot as Minister of Health and Welfare under premier Masayoshi Ōhira in 1978, in 1980 became the LDP's director of finance and public administration.
He again became a cabinet minister in 1986 under Yasuhiro Nakasone, in 1989 became secretary general of the LDP, the highest rank short of party president Hashimoto became a key figure in the strong LDP faction founded by Kakuei Tanaka in the 1970s, which fell into the hands of Noboru Takeshita, tainted by the Recruit scandal of 1988. In 1991, the press had discovered that one of Hashimoto's secretaries had been involved in an illegal financial dealing. Hashimoto retired as Minister of Finance from the Second Kaifu Cabinet. Following the collapse of the bubble economy, the LDP momentarily lost power in 1993/94 during the Hosokawa and Hata anti-LDP coalition cabinets negotiated by LDP defector Ichirō Ozawa. Hashimoto was brought back to the cabinet when the LDP under Yōhei Kōno returned to power in 1994 by entering a ruling coalition with traditional archrival Japanese Socialist Party, giving the prime ministership to the junior partner, the minor New Party Harbinger. Hashimoto became Minister of International Trade and Industry in the Murayama Cabinet of Tomiichi Murayama.
As the chief of MITI, Hashimoto made himself known at summit conferences. In September 1995, Yōhei Kōno did not stand for another term. Hashimoto won the election to LDP president against Jun'ichirō Koizumi 304 votes to 87, succeeded Kōno as leader of the party and as deputy prime minister in the Murayama cabinet; when Murayama stepped down in 1996, the 135th National Diet elected Hashimoto to become Japan's 82nd prime minister – he was elected against NFP leader Ichirō Ozawa with 288 votes to 167 in the lower house and 158 to 69 in the upper house – and lead the continued LDP-JSP-NPH coalition government. Hashimoto reached an agreement with the United States for the repatriation of MCAS Futenma, a controversial U. S. military base in an urban area of Okinawa, in April 1996. The deal was opposed by Japan's foreign ministry and defense agency but was backed by Hashimoto's American counterpart, President Bill Clinton; the repatriation of the base has yet to be completed as of 2015, as Okinawans have opposed efforts to relocate the base to a new site.
Hashimoto's domestic popularity increased during the Japanese-US trade dispute when he publicly confronted Mickey Kantor, US Trade Representative for the Clinton administration. Hashimoto's popularity was based on his attitude; when asked about why Japanese car dealerships did not sell American cars, he answered, "Why doesn't IBM sell Fujitsu computers?" When Japan's economy did not seem to be recovering from its 1991 collapse, Hashimoto ordered a commission of experts from the private sector to look into improving the Japanese market for foreign competition, opening it completely. On September 27, 1996, the Hashimoto cabinet dissolved the lower house of the National Diet. In the ensuing general lower house election in October, the LDP made gains while its coalition partners SDP – the JSP had been renamed after the formation of the Hashimoto cabinet – and NPH lost seats. Both parties ended the coalition with the LDP, but they remained Diet allies in a cooperation outside the cabinet until 1998.
Thus, the LDP and the Second Hashimoto Cabinet safely controlled both houses of the Diet, although it was technically in the minority by a few seats in the lower house, well short of a majority in the upper house. It was the first single-party LDP government since 1993. Having achieved this, Hashimoto was confirmed without challenger as party president in September 1997. Hashimoto's government raised the Japanese consumption tax in 1997. Although the government implemented a reduction in the personal income tax prior to raising the consumption tax, the hike still had a negative effect on consumer demand in Japan. During the Upper House regular election 1998, the LDP failed to restore its majority and instead lost more seats. Hashimoto resigned to take responsibility for this failure, was succeeded as LDP president and Prime Minister by Foreign Minister Keizō Obuchi. Mr. Hashimoto stayed in a LDP adviser party, in the 2nd Mori Cabinet the Minister of Okinawa Development Agency and Minister in charge of administrative reform were appointed.
He led the faction for several years. In 2001 he was one of the leading candidates to take office as prime minister but lost in the election of the more popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Hashimoto's faction began to collapse late in 2003 while debating over. In 2004, Hashimoto stepped down as faction leader when he was
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