TOKYO, Jan. 28, 2021―The Japanese government’s Covid-19 policy is so out of synch with reality that the country is in the process of collapsing, Takero Morimoto, the anchor of a popular morning radio news show criticized prime minister Yoshihide Suga Jan. 27, 2021, as the country’s vaccination minister retracted earlier comment and now said he doesn’t know when vaccines can be sufficiently stockpiled for national vaccination.
The 19 trillion yen ($190 billion) supplementary budget, the third amendment to the fiscal 2020 budget, is so fraught with outlays to special interests that only 4 trillion yen will be used for battling the Covid-19 pandemic.
While spurning opposition’s calls for more generous spending and curbing Covid-19 related outlays as planned by the bureaucracy, Suga allocated more than 1 trillion yen for the controversial Go To Travel tourism program to encourage the Japanese to travel more and far in Japan. He also stonewalled to criticisms during the Jan. 26 parliamentary session that his government should call off the Tokyo Olympic games this summer and allocated additional money in the supplementary budget ― while crimping on outlays for rebuilding the 2011 earthquake-hit areas.
Suga’s attitude is raising the public’s ire and causing his public support threatening to tumble below 30 percent, yet he’s not likely to yield at all as he is not serving as a real leader, the role that’s controlled by kingmaker Toshihiro Nikai, finance minister Taro Aso and others. ‘Japan is collapsing,’ Morimoto bemoaned during the Jan. 27 morning radio show.
Yet, Suga is not likely to dissolve the Diet (parliament) soon despite his slipping popularity, and instead he’s resolved to continue holding on to his seat until this fall, when law requires a general election of the lower house. He seems to believe in the ‘follow the money’ theory with the thinking that Nikai, the war chest guardian of the ruling LDP party, can support him, plus Taro Aso as finance minister to grease with taxpayer money to get popular votes, instead of using the same money to spend for fighting Covid-19 and help medical and essential workers. Suga, Aso and Nikai see medical workers as members and/or supporters of the communist and socialist parties.
Vaccines are not coming to Japan! Diet session interpellations and investigations into the Japanese government and healthcare industries revealed that Japan is not likely to be able to start Covid-19 vaccination in late February as claimed by Suga as ‘the largest historical undertaking.’ True to that, Vaccination minister Kono Jan. 27 retracted his earlier comment and now said vaccination won’t start before April 1 at the earliest. He’d said it would start from February and mass vaccination for the seniors from March.
Japan’s vaccine supplies are a totally unknown story: On Jan. 20, the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare announced the ‘formal signing’ with Pfizer to receive 144 million shots ‘within the year’ ― a significant delay from the end of June, by which Japan was to secure 120 million. Many Japanese are asking now, ‘Didn’t the government sign a contract earlier? ― apparently not.’
While Japan is at a standstill or backtracking on vaccination, India and China are fielding their active vaccine diplomacy to their neighboring countries as well as to other parts of the world, according to news reports. That has prompted radio anchor Morimoto to declare that Japan is losing to the two countries and even Russia on the diplomatic front. ‘What’s wrong with those politicians!”?,’ he decried.
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