Well, Bureaucrats Are Smart

After showing its incompetence in reconstruction for three years, the Government of Japan seems to began to abandon sufferers of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Putting aside, or mostly ignoring, oppositions from residents, the government on Sunday decided a policy of lifting evacuation order in Miyakoji district of Tamura City, Fukushima, starting April 1^st. In the meeting with the residents, officials of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry unilaterally declared the policy, after hours long discussion. According to Mainichi Shimbun, one bureaucrat boasted “Well, bureaucrats are smart.”

The meeting was held between fourteen officials from national government or City of Tamura and a hundred residents in Miyakoji district, located within 20 kilometers from the First Fukushima. Although most residents were willing to go home in the district, they were all skeptical about the situation of their hometown, worried about the impact on health caused by high radiation there.

At the beginning of the meeting, residents requested the government thorough decontamination efforts not only around their houses but also forests covering the district. When an hour and half past, taking advantage of some residents’ opinion that suggested reliance on the government, one official with the Operation Office for Nuclear Disaster abruptly started talking about when the evacuation should be lifted. He explained that evacuation order had been an exceptional policy, which disturbed the right of residence in the Article XXII of the Constitution of Japan. The decision for April 1^st was not an agreement but an order as a matter of fact.

Democracy for bureaucrats is not understanding what people say, but spending time for pretending to be listening to people’s voice. In Miyakoji, the time democracy survived was one and a half hour. After exercising quasi-democracy, there comes despotism. No opinion against them would be heard. The message to the residents of Miyakoji was “Ok, we will lift the order. You can get back home. No additional decontamination or fiscal compensation will be done. The district is safe, though we don’t know it’s true. It’s the matter of scientists, not ours. It’s up to you whether you return home. It’s not our decision. That’s it.”

That is how the government disregards its people. They fabricate public opinions that justify ignoring areal radiation, deny the impact of radioactive materials on human body, mainly thyroid disease, and indicate people’s agreement on returning back home. They are too busy in dealing with trivial matters to see the world.

If you see some people whispering and smirking each other on a corner of reception room in an international conference, wearing shabby business suit and colorless tie, speaking no English, and dispersing no sexual appeal, they are Japanese bureaucrats. They are not smart, but infamy of Japan.