Likening her one-time political ally to a "street performer," former Japanese foreign minister Makiko Tanaka said on Tuesday that she regretted helping Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to power three years ago.
Tanaka, a lawmaker and former member of Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was once one of Japan's most popular politicians. Her tireless campaigning at Koizumi's side was a key element in his rise to power in April 2001.
But her outspokenness, and a bitter battle with foreign ministry bureaucrats and their LDP backers, led Koizumi to sack her in January 2002.
On Tuesday, the fiery Tanaka slammed Koizumi on a wide range of policies, including his decision to send troops to Iraq and have them take part in multinational forces there.
"He is like a street performer," she told reporters. "He will do various things like juggling, breathing fire and riding a unicycle, but when things go against him, he just folds up his wrapping cloth and withdraws.
"I feel ashamed that I helped ... someone so flippant."
The LDP suspended her and she resigned from parliament seven months after her sacking as foreign minister over accusations that she misappropriated funds intended to pay an aide's salary.
Tanaka regained her seat last November as an independent.
Long known for her sharp tongue and pithy sayings, Tanaka has not spared Koizumi since her return to parliament.
She has dismissed him as an old-style LDP politician incapable of carrying out the reforms he has promised, and likened him to a "spoilt brat" in a December interview for what she called his stubborn insistence on making decisions and not listening to others.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS