Yoshimi Watanabe

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Yoshimi Watanabe in January 2010

Yoshimi Watanabe ( Japanese 渡 辺 喜 美 , Watanabe Yoshimi ; born March 17, 1952 in Nishinasuno (today Nasushiobara ), Tochigi Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician and has been a member of the Sangiin , the upper house of the national parliament , for the national proportional constituency since 2016 . From 1996 to 2014 he was a member of the Shūgiin , the national lower house, for the 3rd constituency of Tochigi. Today he is nationally independent and leads the Sangiin faction Minna no Tō ; He also founded a regional party of the same name for the uniform prefectural and local elections in 2019. From 2009 to 2014 he was chairman of the national Minna no Tō ("Everyone's Party"), from 2016 to 2017 he was a member of the Nippon Ishin no Kai . In January 2009 he left the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), for which he was cabinet minister from 2007 to 2008.

life and career

Watanabe studied law at Chūō University , where he graduated in 1979. Before that he studied at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Waseda University until 1977 . From 1983 he was secretary to his father, the Shūgiin MP, Minister for International Trade and Industry and later Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe . After his death in 1995, he took over his constituency in the 1996 Shūgiin election . Until the " Katō Rebellion " of 2000 Watanabe belonged to the Etō-Kamei faction .

Prime Minister Shinzō Abe appointed Watanabe in December 2006 to succeed the Minister for Deregulation, Gen'ichirō Sata, who resigned due to a donation scandal . When the cabinet reshuffle in August 2007 Watanabe was then Minister of State for the financial sector, a month later he was also given responsibility for administrative reform and "reform of the civil service" ( kōmuinseido kaikaku ) in the Yasuo Fukuda cabinet . In a cabinet reshuffle in August 2008, he was replaced by Toshimitsu Motegi (LDP, Tsushima faction ).

On December 24, 2008, Watanabe voted in the Shūgiin against his parliamentary group in favor of a motion by the opposition Democratic Party for the dissolution of the chamber and early elections. He justified his move by saying that new elections were the only way to break the political blockade ( Nejire Kokkai ). Watanabe then stated that he would remain in the LDP if he was not excluded. But he did not rule out the possibility of leaving the LDP and founding a new party. On December 25, 2008, Watanabe received a reprimand, the second mildest of eight possible disciplinary measures in the LDP.

On January 13, 2009, he left the LDP with reference to the policies of Prime Minister Aso. For the Shūgiin election in 2009 he founded the Minna no Tō ("Party of All") in August 2009, which ran with 14 candidates. Three former MPs and the Sangiin MP Keiichirō Asao , who was expelled from the Democratic Party in July , also took part in the establishment . The Minna no Tō was able to record several electoral successes under Watanabe since 2009: In the Sangiin election in 2010 it was the third strongest party in the proportional representation and in 2011 moved into several prefecture parliaments.

After a scandal over an unreported loan from Yoshiaki Yoshida, chairman of the cosmetics company DHC, in the amount of 800 million yen, as well as further loans of 600 million yen, he had to resign from his position as party chairman in April 2014. After the dissolution of the party, he ran for the Shūgiin election in 2014 without a party and was defeated by the Liberal Democrat Kazuo Yana with 40.1% to 48.7% .

In the 2016 Sangiin election , he ran for the Ōsaka Ishin no Kai in the national proportional representation electoral district, received 143,343 votes and thus reached second place on the list, which meant the successful election with four Ishin seats.

After the 2019 election , Watanabe and Takashi Tachibana of the "Party for the Protection of the People from the NHK" founded a new parliamentary group under the name Minna no Tō .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Japan PM rejects snap election but meets defiance. In: Agence France-Presse . December 24, 2008, accessed December 24, 2008 .
  2. ↑ 閉塞 打破 は 解散 ・ 総 選 挙 だ け 、 自 発 的 離 党 考 え ず ＝ 渡 辺 元 金融 相. In: Reuters . December 24, 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2008 (Japanese).
  3. ↑ Kazuaki Nagata: Watanabe vies for change. In: The Japan Times . December 25, 2008, accessed December 26, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Watanabe slapped for rebel vote. In: Asahi Shimbun . December 26, 2008, archived from the original on December 26, 2008 ; accessed on December 26, 2008 (English).
  5. ^ Watanabe quits LDP over row with Aso. (No longer available online.) In: The Mainichi Daily News . January 13, 2009, formerly in the original ; accessed on January 13, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / mdn.mainichi.jp  
  6. ↑ google.com/hostednews ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Japan lawmaker defects in blow to 'old-guard' PM
  7. ^ Ex-minister Watanabe starts new political party. In: The Japan Times . August 9, 2009, accessed August 11, 2009 .
  8. ↑ EDITORIALS: Plug political funding loopholes. In: The Japan Times Online. April 28, 2014, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Yomiuri Shimbun , election results Shūgiin 2014: Tochigi 1–5
  10. ↑ Yomiuri Shimbun , election results Sangiin 2016: Proportional constituency, Ōsaka Ishin no Kai
personal data
SURNAME Watanabe, Yoshimi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 渡 辺 喜 美 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Nishinasuno (Tochigi) , Nasu-gun (Tochigi) , Tochigi Prefecture , Japan