The question remains as to why the Liberal Democratic Party and its ruling coalition partner, Komeito, forced two bills to abolish the Social Insurance Agency through the just-ended Diet session with such haste. Suspicions also have been raised about the contents of the bills.
The way in which the bills were enacted into law demonstrated that the coalition was more interested in creating the impression that it had dealt with pension-related issues than in taking the time needed to discuss and resolve actual problems.
Current pension problems stem from record-keeping blunders at the Social Insurance Agency. The agency is having trouble verifying identities for up to 50 million pension premium-payment records. Lawmakers should have been given enough time to carefully examine what actually happened at the SIA, and why, and to discuss what measures should be taken, or what kind of system should be established, to prevent a recurrence of this fiasco. But this did not happen.
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