Shinzo Abe – A PM without conscience,
wisdom or compassion.
-- By Anuj Wankhede
Does this not sound unreal? Maybe even surreal.
Even as the situation at the crippled Fukushima-Daichi Nuclear power plant rapidly goes out of control, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to have his goal set on winning the bid to host the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo!
Abe plans to travel to Buenos Aires where the International Olympic Committee members will vote on Saturday (7th September) to choose a host city for the games.
Sure, we do not
expect a modicum of intelligence from our world leaders today. If it is Abe in
Japan, then it is the likes of Manmohan Singh in India or Obama in the US who
behave like absolute fools when it comes to taking wise decisions. We, the
citizens have learnt to have as little or possibly no expectations from these “world
leaders.”
But has it also become
a pre-requisite to have cotton in your ears and sawdust in your skull to
become the Prime Minister of a nation?
That’s because the actions of Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seem to indicate that this is exactly
the case with him. He probably has blindfolded eyes too (besides the cotton and
sawdust) because he cannot see what’s beyond his nose (probably, not even
that much)
The March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami shattered a major part of Japan and left it in
shambles within minutes - causing enormous damage to life and property. Given
the propensity for natural disasters - particularly by earthquakes – Japan was
in a better emergency preparedness mode than any other country in the world.
While this massive earthquake would have made many a skyscrapers collapse
elsewhere and flattened cities, the good construction and planning in Japan saved
further human and economic losses.
But among all
these brilliant planners and designers were nuclear scientists who consider
that whatever they say is gospel and Holy Grail. They claim to know the best
because at some point they managed to add a “nuclear” tag to themselves and were
instantly teleported from being ordinary human beings into pantomaths (persons who
have reached the pinnacle of knowledge and know everything.)
At Fukushima
(about 150 miles off Tokyo) on the Pacific seashore, THEY built was a huge
nuclear plant with 4 gigantic reactors, none of which were able to take the
brunt of the quake and tsunami onslaught and are now literally at an angle worse
than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “THEY” in this case is the Japanese
government, prodded by the USA government and greedy corporates and which have now been mothballed by the utility
that ran and is 'apparently' still running operations there however shoddily called TEPCO (Tokyo Electric
Power Co.)
Much has been
said, written, photographed and videos have shown about the current state
of the reactors. The world knows the results of the commission of inquiry setup
to go into the facts of the case and how TEPCO was exposed – nay, hauled
over the coals - in that report and was shown as a greedy utility operator which
cut corners to save money even after repeated warnings about plant safety. The
world also knows how the governments’ regulatory agency worked in collusion
with TEPCO and overlooked all these discrepancies. The world is also aware of
how the government of Japan overtly and covertly tried to do a (shoddy) cover up
job about the actual damage to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex and indulged
in complete lies, half-truths and shameless cover ups to claim that everything
at Fukushima is under control.
One could have forgiven all these and either
condoned them or punished the guilty later had it not been for the fact that
despite over two and a half years passing by, the situation at Fukushima has
become far more serious than want it was in 2011. Instead of improving, things
are rapidly going downhill and spiraling out of control.
And yet, the
government of Japan - led by the cotton and sawdust PM Abe - seems be in a
complete denial about the severity and the criticality of the situation at
Fukushima just outside Tokyo city (and hence the point of him also being
blindfolded.)
Let’s look at
the material facts which Abe should surely be aware of:
1)TEPCO simply cannot be
trusted – neither in its words, nor its promises, nor its abilities to handle
the situation.
2) The reactor buildings are in an extremely precarious condition and another earthquake may result in a collapse of the whole structure.
3) Heavy machinery used at the plant was damaged by the 2011 events and there is limited machinery to do any meaningful work immediately until replacements are built.
4) Hundreds of tons of highly radioactive spent coolant water are leaking from make-shift drums lying in the open daily and radiation levels have risen to a level of 2200millSelverts – levels enough to kill within hours.
5)The situation is so critical that thousands of fuel rods have to be removed from the reactors in an extremely delicate manner or else they will set off an atomic chain reaction which will go out of control and cause havoc.
6)Over 150000 people have been evacuated (displaced) to temporary shelters with no clue about when (if ever) they will return to their homes.
Amidst all this,
our friend Abe has this to say:
“I want to explain [to IOC delegates] that in
2020 this will not be a problem at all”
 |
| False Bravado! |
And yet, TEPCO itself has admitted that the decommissioning process for the plant has been forecast to take about 40 years and cost at least $11 billion. Independent experts say this is an optimistic assessment and the actual time frame and costs will be far higher.
But the bid
for hosting the 2020 Olympics is not the first cardinal mistake/sin that Abe has made and is continuing to make.
He has been in a
tearing rush to push Japanese NUCLEAR supplies and “technology”
to developing countries!! Had it been a matter of Toshiba exporting laptops & televisions or Mitsubishi selling motorcycles or Hitachi selling cranes & train
locos, one could have completely understood it. But for JAPAN which was nuked twice and is still limping somehow with critically failed nuclear power plants to export NUCLEAR??? Unreal. Surreal.
What can be more
shameful than sitting a few miles away from the world’s worst nuclear disaster
and yet sell the very cause of this damage to others simply to salvage your own
private companies! Hell, these companies such as Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi
Heavy etc are supposed to operate under the capitalist market driven forces.
They are not doing any charity. Let them fend for themselves in bad times. It
is not as if they have shared anything meaningful during their good times
(unless it benefited them in some manner.)
Any other person
of reasonable intelligence would have counseled his colleague from another country
to give up on the nuclear energy dream and would have also pointed out to the
shut 50 nuclear reactors around Japan and how the country still manages without
them. Hell, even the Indian Prime Minister -with his near sub zero IQ -
would have grasped that logic had Abe explained it to him patiently and with
his hand on his heart.
But NO, sawdust
does not give people intelligence. Intelligence requires brains while counseling
others and for genuine caring, one needs a heart - both of which Abe has shown that he
does not possess by his repeated crass actions.
How else do you
explain the aggressive bidding and lobbying by Abe and his government for
building Turkey’s nuclear reactors and winning the bid recently? This, even
after knowing that seismic
hazard is very high in Turkey – a country that has a history of massive earthquakes
measuring about 7 and above on the Richter scale every 5 years causing huge damage.
Is this responsible or ethical behavior by a world
leader?
I believe that this is crass, repulsive, unethical and unprincipled
behavior by the Prime Minister of a country whose country has not yet come to
grips with its own disastrous situation.
But now Abe seems to be going even one step
further. He has his eyes firmly set on winning the 2020 Olympics and is
being goaded along by vested interests from the West who have a huge economic stakes
in Japan, the value of the Yen and the levels of Nikkei.
Their only concern is to have a dog and pony show
for the global audiences and pretend that all-is-well in Tokyo and hence to
come and do business with Japan. A showpiece to show that it's "business as usual."
Unfortunately, like everything else, what Abe and
company miss out is this:
a) Fukushima and Japan's problems are not going to get over just
yet, certainly not in the next 7 years.
b) An event like the Olympics will put extreme pressure on
resources – both financial as well as human resources.
c) It will shift focus away from the tasks at hand
and will force the best planners to work towards the Olympics rather than
finding creative and immediate solutions to defusing the Fukushima crisis.
Hundreds of
thousands are still coming to grips of the events which occurred on 3.11.2011 and are
going through extreme emotional (not to speak of financial) trauma. In such a
situation, the PM should in fact have declined any offer to host the 2020 event
even if it had been made proactively by the IOC.
Abe's attitude
towards attaining cheap political and economic mileage smacks of heartlessness and
places him right next to Queen Marie Antoinotte for complete callousness towards
his own people.
All that the
2020 Olympics will do is to divert the nation’s attention from the impending doom and create a fake temporary feel good atmosphere.
Unfortunately,
if the Japanese government does not accord the priority deserved to tackling
Fukushima, then Japan as we know may well not exist to host the 2020 Olympics.
Are you
listening Mr. Shinzo Abe?
Oh I am so
sorry, I forgot about the cotton in the ears…..
