Japan greets the new year with political stagnation and dysfunction inherited from 2008. The stifling atmosphere nationwide is due not only to deepening economic difficulties caused by the global financial crisis that started in the United States but also to the failure of Prime Minister Taro Aso's administration to act quickly to implement measures to stimulate the economy, stabilize people's lives and lay the foundations for future economic growth.
Opposition forces are also partly responsible for this situation. They failed to fully take advantage of their majority in the Upper House to get the ruling bloc and government to concentrate on minimizing the effect of the global economic slowdown — either because of their lack of tenacity to achieve political ends or because of their artless Diet tactics.
Both ruling and opposition politicians should keep in mind that people's deep despair over and resentment toward politics demand that they make utmost efforts to meet their goals when the Diet resumes its work Jan. 5.