By Kohki Watanabe

The session of the Committee on the Budget for 2001 in the House of Representatives was confused and confusing. This was because the Foreign Ministry had excluded a Japanese non-governmental organization(NGO) from the Afghanistan assistance conference, and Muneo Suzuki, chairman of the House Representatives Rules and Administrative Committee, had intervened in this decision.

This problem began when Kensuke Onishi, supervisor of the Japanese NGO "Peace Winds Japan"(PWJ) criticized the Foreign Ministry to the media. Suzuki raged against his words and persuaded the Foreign Ministry to exclude PWJ from the Afghanistan assistance conference. In the end, PWJ was able to participate in the conference through the good offices of Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, but Onishi said, "the Foreign Ministry secretly changed the policy without good cause and procedure as a result of Suzuki's pressure." In the Diet session, remarks about this problem made by Tanaka and the ministry's Administrative Vice Minister Yoshiji Nogami were at variance. As a result of this, the Diet session was highly confused. To save the situation, Prime Minister Koizumi decided to remove Tanaka and Nogami, while Suzuki resigned his position to take the responsibility for the Diet confusion.

What emerges in the light of this problem is the lack of cooperation between the bureaucracy and the Minister attendant on the reality that a politician excessively intervened in the decisions of the bureaucracy. Suzuki might have known the truth of the discretionary fund appropriation in the Foreign Ministry that was detected last year, and because of this, Suzuki might have bent the Foreign Ministry to his own use. There was no need for Suzuki, who is a politician but not a member of the government, to rage against criticism of the Foreign Ministry, and there was thus no reason for the Foreign Ministry to exclude PWJ from the conference, simply to preserve its relationship with Suzuki. Tanaka had tried to disclose what the Foreign Ministry was actually doing to protect its own interests, and she enjoyed high public popularity because this was what the people expected her to do.

However, because Tanaka tried to carry out the reform forcibly, the Foreign Ministry's Secretariat refused to cooperate with her, and the Japanese diplomatic function stagnated. As a result of this, and because of Tanaka's controversial remarks and her lack of fundamental knowledge about diplomacy,　other country's confidence in Japan diminished. Because of her actions, both the ruling and the opposition parties, as well as the media, had repeatedly pointed out her poor stature as Foreign Minister. It is true that Tanaka might have been an inadequate Foreign Minister, but her critics should have investigated the scandals and the collusion between a politician and the Foreign Ministry.

Prime Minister Koizumi dismissed Tanaka and failed to disclose the truth as to the actual internal responsibility. As a result, the approval rating of the Koizumi Cabinet plummeted from 77 percent to 49 percent, reflecting discontent over the sacking of Tanaka. According to popular opinion, Suzuki brought pressure to bear on the Foreign Ministry. Although Tanaka tried to carry out the reform that people hoped for, the bureaucracy of the Foreign Ministry revolted against her and gave priority to its links with a back-door politician. Most of the members of the ruling party and government think that as a result of the dismissal of Tanaka, Nogami and Suzuki, this problem is over. In fact, however, the investigation about the exclusion of the NGO from the Afghanistan assistance conference that the government announced on February 8th was very far removed from the truth.

The people elected Koizumi as prime minister because they believed that he would reform the political habits of the Liberal Democratic Party that has always hidden the truth. Yet his actions have not shown the slightest improvement on the party's former habits of behind-the-scenes politics. Because of the "Japanese solution" to this problem, people have a great distrust of the government, and Prime Minister Koizumi should return to the promises of his inauguration when he spoke to the people using his own words. We expect to Koizumi to tackle the necessary political issues straightforwardly, with all his might. Only continual efforts can regain the trust of the Japanese people and the respect of foreign countries and their governments.