Regarding "Abe denies Kake cronyism in Diet grilling" in the April 12 edition, when the stuff hits the fan, all the implicated suddenly suffer inexplicable losses of memory.
It's as though they have taken a drug to mimic Alzheimer's — suddenly all the king's men can't even remember what they had for breakfast, let alone how many lies they have told to cover up the prime minister's murky educational wheeling and dealings. Meanwhile his wife, Akie, secrets her secretary away to Italy to ensure key witnesses are mysteriously unavailable to testify in the scandalous quagmire they created — and still his beloved spouse defies accountability by deferentially flipping the bird at the public by not deigning to honor us with her sworn testimony in the Diet.
Does anybody actually know how much we've spent in taxes on Saeko Tani's self-awarded sabbatical in Rome?
Of course not, it's the government's preferential budget on a need to know basis and the public doesn't need to know how its tithes are being abused, a sad and perverted reminder of the days when former Prime Minister Hatoyama insisted that even a humble ¥1 of taxpayers' hard-earned money should be verified with a receipt — so exactly how many billions has Abe squandered anonymously covering his cynical trail of corruption?
We'll never know.
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.