Regarding "Opposition lawmakers find at least 117 errors in botched labor survey" in the Feb. 23 edition, in recent years stem cell research was disgraced and disqualified by the falsification of a few items of discredited data. Meanwhile the government has falsified over a hundred items of data in just one incident of trying to evade allowing really old people to retire. Even the Emperor has had to appeal for the right to cease his heavy duties.
The revelation suggests that the government has resorted to serious crimes not once but on numerous occasions.
The difference, however, is that the comparatively minuscule responsibility of the stem cell researchers has been severely dealt with while lawmakers, supposedly the most responsible people in any society, seem licensed to lie at will.
For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe alone, this is at least the third time his government has been suspected of serious deceit after Kake and Moritomo.
We will never know how many lies about the dangers of Japan's nuclear power program that his party may have told since its inception decades ago. Yet neither he nor his LDP have been properly investigated, even once.
Before Abe, prime ministers disappeared regularly for far less serious offenses, at the rate of one a year. So how has the current prime minister made himself so impervious to truth and the law?
Or has truth and the law become so irreversibly bent out of shape that those in power can twist it to their own ulterior schemes and self-serving agendas?
Let's either admit the law is meaningless for the powerful, or once and for all expose the government's dishonesties.
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.
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