Who Elected Him?

Shame is more on his constituency than on the strange politician. A member of Hyogo Prefectural Assembly, Ryutaro Nonomura, who showed a hysteric crying to defend his position in a press conference, could not made reasonable explanation about his irregular spending of money. He indicated retirement taking responsibility for the scandal on Monday. After all, that was a TV show, reflecting sickness of Japanese society.

In the two-hour press conference last Wednesday, Nonomura screamed out for claiming his innocence in spending for business trips after journalists grilled him. “Cares for aged people are aaaaaaaaaa common to all over Japaaaaan waaaaaaaa,” was the way Nonomura cried out, which made no sense as his explanation. Unfortunately for Japanese people, advanced technology of world wide web, such as YouTube, disseminated his obviously insane appearance to the world. Watchers might have realized that Japanese society was deteriorated to the extent that drug addiction severely harmed a local politician, or that governmental regulation was too strict for news agencies to report ordinary politics.

The scandal was a story so unrealistic that everyone could understand that Nonomura had been lying. He submitted one hundred ninety five business trips a year to the assembly office and obtained over three million yen as the reward. The reward was disbursed from the budget of Hyogo regional government, or tax money in short. Not only did he fail in presenting receipts for train tickets, he repeated “I can’t reclaim” when he was asked how he visited those destinations. He even submitted a business trip by train for a day when all the trains were cancelled due to stormy weather.

TVs kept on broadcasting his crying face. Comedy talents took advantage of his press conference for their gag performance. Facebook and Twitter were filled with Likes for joking on him. Some argued that Nonomura was funnier than professional comedians and others competed each other mimicking him.

This is not only a matter of political ethics, however, but of committing a crime of fraud. No one can guarantee so far that he really made that big number of trips. The discussion by senior members in Hyogo Assembly on Monday was focused on whether he should step down as an assembly man. Nonomura admitted that it would be a matter of his resignation. But most local assemblies also have the same problem in spending public money for policy research. If the scandal leads to resignation of Nonomura, the same kind of problems may appear one after another.