Takahiro Yokomichi

Takahiro Yokomichi (Japanese横路 孝 弘, Yokomichi Takahiro, born January 3, 1941 in Sapporo, Hokkaidō ) is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party (DPJ ), a member and former president of Shūgiin, the Japanese Lower House, and former governor of Hokkaidō. Within the party he leads the Yokomichi group ( officially :新 政局 恳谈 会, Shin- seikyoku Kondankai ), which consists mostly of former Social Democrats and Socialists.

Life

Yokomichi is the son of socialist Shūgiin MPs and former gubernatorial candidate Yokomichi Setsuo. After completing his studies in 1966 at the Law Faculty of the University of Tokyo, he worked as a lawyer in Sapporo. 1969 his father died, and he was in the election in December of the same year for the Socialist Party of Japan ( SPJ ) elected to its constituency Hokkaidō 1 to Shūgiin, which he initially belonged then to 1983.

Yokomichi in 1983, 24 years after the failed candidacy of his father, was elected as an Independent with SPJ support against the LDP supported by the Lieutenant Governor to succeed Dōgakinai Naohiro as governor of Hokkaidō. 1987 and 1991 he was elected for two successive terms in office. In 1995, he left the office of Lieutenant Governor Tatsuya Hori.

For the newly founded DPJ Yokomichi was re-elected in 1996 one new Einmandatswahlkreis Hokkaidō into Shūgiin there and then re-elected four times in a row. After the 2005 Shūgiin election he was elected Vice President of the Shūgiin after the current incumbent Kansei Nakano (DPJ ) had lost his seat. After the democratic election victory in 2009 he was elected on 16 September 2009 the President of the Shūgiin. In his terms as vice president and president, he was mostly common -attached as it is today.

In the DPJ Yokomichi was repeatedly Vice-Chairman (1999, 2000 and 2002 ) and 2004 in the shadow cabinet in charge of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. 2002 formed DPJ MPs who had heard before the party establishment to SPJ, under Yokomichis chaired a joint faction, the Shin- Seikyoku Kondankai.

When Shūgiin - election in 2012, when the Democratic Party lost all constituencies in Hokkaido, Yokomichi defeated by approximately 6,000 votes to the former prefecture MPs Toshimitsu Funahashi (LDP ), led with this scarce constituency defeat but the DPJ list Hokkaidō and won one of two seats the Democrats in the proportional representation block Hokkaidō.