Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Can Shinzo Abe’s Covid bung save the Japanese PM?

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon - Pool/Getty Images

I experienced a novel, if fleeting, sensation last week when I was struck with a powerful urge to vote for Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in the next election, expected within the next 18 months. This warm glow was sparked by Abe’s decision to give every adult resident of Japan a one-off corona ‘compensation’ payment of 100,000 yen (£720).

All we have to do to get the money is fill in a form and send it off. However, the document is curious as it contains an option to refuse the handout if you don’t want it. As confusingly arranged as one of those ‘tick this box if you don’t mind us sharing your details, etc, etc.’ options at the bottom of sign-up forms, it is genuinely easy to make an expensive mistake.

Cynics have suggested this may be a cunning ruse to deceive the careless and doddery to save a bit of cash. But they are probably overthinking it; more likely it’s a response to the lawmakers who have ostentatiously vowed to refuse the money ‘on principal’ – for whom ticking the no ‘thank you’ box will doubtless give them a moment of great satisfaction, and something to boast about come election time.

The payment could easily be seen as a bribe, of course – a desperate plea for approval from a PM whose scandal-wracked administration the public has long grown tired of. The latest furore in an endless sequence has been a Dominic Cummings-esque incident involving the chief public prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa, who flouted stay-at-home guidelines to play mahjong with journalists – twice. The law lord was close to Abe, and his subsequent resignation a further blow to the embattled PM.

The Japanese still view dependence on the state with great suspicion

In truth, Abe has few options open to him now. His long-cherished dream of rewriting the constitution looks to have gone, and his foreign policy initiatives with China and North Korea are in deadlock.

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