Seiji Maehara
Seiji Maehara (Japanese前 原 诚 司, Maehara Seiji, born April 30, 1962 at Sakyō -ku, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture) is a Japanese politician and MP in the Shūgiin ( lower house) for the Democratic Party. He was from September 2010 to March 6, 2011 Foreign Minister Kan 's cabinet. and 2005-2006 Chairman of the Democratic Party. Within the party is behind him own faction, the Maehara group ( also Maehara - Edano group; officially Ryōunkai ).
Life and career
Maehara is a graduate of the Law Faculty of Kyoto University and the Matsushita Seikei Juku ( engl. The Matsushita Institute of Government and Management). In 1991 he was elected for the Municipality Sakyō into Parliament Prefecture of Kyoto. In 1992 he participated in the founding of the New Japan Party, for which he (5 seats) took at the Shūgiin - election in 1993 in the first constituency of Kyoto and the second highest share of the vote behind Keiji Kokuta ( CPY ) was first elected to the national parliament. As a parliamentarian he was then six times re-elected in a row: in 1996 in the newly created proportional representation block Kinki, since 2000, five times in a single constituency Kyoto 2 During the Parteiumbildungen 1990s he belonged in the New Japan Party initially the fraction Minshu no Kaze ( " Wind of Democracy " ), the new Party Sakigake and, finally, since 1996 the Democratic Party.
After the landslide defeat of the Democrats in the 2005 election Shūgiin the then party leader Katsuya Okada resigned. Maehara was elected by a narrow margin against Naoto Kan to succeed. During the Livedoor scandal over the Internet company Livedoor an e -mail was published by MEPs Hisayasu Nagata, in which the already arrested Livedoor President Takafumi Horie ordered a cash payment to the son of the Secretary-General Tsutomu Takebe LDP. However, the mail turned out to be a fake; Maehara resigned in April 2006 back from the party chairmanship. Under his successor Ichirō Ozawa Maehara returned in 2007 as Vice-Chairman ( fuku - Daihyō ) in the party leadership back.
2009 Maehara was appointed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama new democratic as Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories and disaster relief in his cabinet. In this role he had the discontinuation defend planned for decades dams by the new government and the restoration of the ailing airline Japan Airlines ( JAL) in the form of set up by the Ministry JAL Saisei Task Force ( JAL再生 タスク フォース, dt as " JAL guided regeneration task Force " ) in the way. In addition, he will want to expand Haneda airport again to the international aviation hub in the Greater Tokyo area, while preserving Narita, as such, announced in October 2009. 2010 took him Hatoyama's successor, Naoto Kan in his cabinet and appointed him in a cabinet reshuffle in September 2010 as the successor of Katsuya Okada as foreign minister. In March 2011 it was announced that Maehara received illegal donations and gave as a consequence of 6 March 2011 his resignation from the post of foreign minister known. His successor, the previous Secretary of State ( " Vice Minister " ) was appointed the Foreign Ministry Takeaki Matsumoto.
Under Naoto Kan's successor, Yoshihiko Noda, he was from 2011 to 2012 Chairman of the Political Research Council of the party.