The Asahi Shimbun is reporting that former Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ishihara Nobuteru will be joining the Yamazaki Faction. After so many years as a non-aligned member of the LDP, he seems to have come to the conclusion he needs factional support to make the next jump upward in the party hierarchy. Since he has already been been LDP Deputy Secretary-General and (very) briefly Chairman of the Policy Research Council, Ishihara is clearly thinking big.
Once he steps inside the 39-member Yamazaki Faction (36 members in the House of Representatives) he will be the faction's princeling.
As one who is on record as being partial toward Ishihara (we were neighbors, our homes less than 150 meters apart) I wish him the best.
I wonder what longtime members of the Yamazaki Faction feel about the sudden arrival of a usurper, though.
＜strike＞ Panda Hugger ＜/strike＞ Mr. Yamazaki, ＜strike＞ Taiwan-Lover＜/strike＞ Mr. Ishihara. Mr. Ishihara, Mr. Yamazaki.
ReplyDeleteYou boys'll get along fine.