Regarding the April 6 editorial "Consumption tax tizzy": The Liberal Democratic Party will indeed cooperate with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's hapless march backward to the bad old days of pork barrels and amakudari (the practice of former government officials finding employment in the private sector).
In fact, the Liberal Democrats recently said their support for the consumption tax was purely for the purpose of getting their feet back in the doors of power; in other words, the LDP cares nothing for the people of Japan — only for themselves. So, it wouldn't matter what LDP members voted for so long as they could recover power for themselves. Their only mandate has always been to grab and keep power at any cost. Perhaps this is not unlike most political parties around the world, but when the Democratic Party of Japan finally kicked the LDP out after a half century of single-party monopoly, it looked for a brief moment like Japan could rise above the brazen and cynical politics of the DPJ's predecessor.
Through the LDP's screaming about every unimportant thing, decent DPJ leaders were ousted unfairly. Japan is now on the edge of moral disaster again, when policies are decided for the self-serving survival of the corrupt and greedy.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.