"Please remember your original intentions. If you submit to Secretary-General Ozawa's authoritarian rule, for what purpose did you become a politician? You should be working to loosen his iron grip. Remember why you chose this profession and please fight for your ideals."
B-san. I was pleased to receive a letter from you. Here is my reply. B-san, open your eyes. If we forgive Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa's authoritarian ways, that's the end of Japan as we know it. That's the end of the Democratic Party of Japan. Ozawa barks "turn right" and the DPJ turns to the right; he says "turn left," and the members promptly turn to the left. We must never forgive this sort of authoritarian politics.
Just about every DPJ lawmaker is ready to fight to protect Ozawa, but you know what this really means, don't you? A large amount of money used for political funds — ¥2.1 billion, to be exact — has been misreported; put more bluntly, the politicians are protecting the falsifying of financial reports. We can't forgive this sort of unjust money politics. Have you discarded your ideal of having the DPJ govern in a clean manner?
It is also strange that most of the DPJ supports and believes Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama when he says that he didn't know his mother was making donations to him. Turning away from the money problems of Ozawa and Hatoyama is the equivalent of abandoning political ethics.
B-san, please open your eyes. I hope you become a politician who fights for democracy.
The author of Curing Japan's America Addiction (Chin Music Press) offers insight and commentary from Tokyo.
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