Japan is set this week to revise a law that would allow Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare a formal state of emergency over COVID-19, if needed, as Abe faces persistent criticism for his handling of the outbreak ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games.
In perhaps his biggest test since returning to office in 2012, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister has come under fire for what critics have called an initial lack of leadership, followed by abrupt steps, such as school closures that left parents and employers scrambling.
Japan has more than 1,000 cases of the virus, including about 700 from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo last month. Fourteen people have died, including seven from the liner.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Among criticisms is that Abe’s government was too slow to put curbs on visitors from China — a key source of economic growth — after the outbreak originated there late last year.
In a recent opinion poll, 50 percent of respondents said they did not approve of Abe’s handling of the outbreak, versus 37 percent who said they did.
Commentators have also said that Japan lacked sufficient capacity to test for the virus, while failing to mobilize what capacity it has, leading to suspicions that the virus is spreading faster than data show.
Vigorous testing programs in countries such as South Korea have detected high numbers of infections.
Speculation — denied by organizers — is swirling that the global outbreak would scupper Japan’s dream of hosting the Tokyo Olympics, an outcome that could become more likely if a state of emergency is declared.
“I want the Olympics to succeed more than anyone, but the negative factors are increasing,” said Yoichi Masuzoe, a former Tokyo governor who was minister of health during a 2009 influenza epidemic.
In its latest move, the government plans to submit to parliament today a bill to revise a 2012 law, enacted after the 2009 epidemic, so that it can be applied to the coronavirus if necessary.
Parliament is expected to sign off on Friday.
The 2012 law was enacted while Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party was the opposition party.
Officials have said that it could not be applied to COVID-19 without changes, although opposition parties and other critics say reinterpreting it is enough.
The law would let the prime minister declare an official state of emergency if the disease poses a “grave danger” to lives and if its rapid spread could have a huge impact on the economy.
The impact of the outbreak is already increasing Japan’s risk of recession.
Governors in hard-hit regions could then ask residents to stay inside, close public facilities, expropriate land and buildings for medical facilities and request or order emergency transport of goods.
The state of emergency could last up to two years with a possible one year-extension.
“Abe could apply the law by re-interpreting it. He’s good at that,” said Masahiro Kami, head of the Medical Governance Research Institute and a critic of the government’s response.
“He wants to appeal [to the public] because things are not going well,” Kami said.
The most urgent issue was not further limits on public activities, but beefing up virus testing and early treatment of elderly and other high-risk patients, he added.
Abe has not made clear what exactly would trigger a state of emergency, yesterday repeating that the revision was to prepare for a “worst-case scenario.”
“I suspect Abe doesn’t want to declare a state of emergency, because it would be killing the Olympics himself,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS