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发表于 2011-6-13 09:09:55
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英语版……默默的一个人贴……
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I lamented a few days ago in this column that Japan's recent prime ministers are "like student council presidents" who serve for only one year. But a 67-year-old retired high school teacher, who was an adviser to his school's student council for many years, corrected me in a letter. "Student council presidents play a vital role in school management and reform," he pointed out. "They are anything but lightweights."
At the end of their term, they hand over their duties to their successors along with massive records of council proceedings and personal observations on what they could have done better. And since they have only one year in which to accomplish their goals, they work with a sense of determination and responsibility that should put all our recent prime ministers to shame, according to this retired teacher who now serves as a district welfare commissioner in Fukushima Prefecture. "For all their talk about the present national crisis, politicians are busy finding fault with one another," he continued. "Survivors of the March disaster have given up on them."
About 8,000 people are still missing. Rebuilding the shattered lives of survivors is proving to be a painfully slow process. And there is no immediate hope for bringing the Fukushima meltdown under control. This is the time when the political community should be working at full throttle. But it appears to have entered an off-season. Exactly three months after the March disaster, this is the mess we have at hand. The souls of the dead are not being consoled, and survivors are in despair.
At the same three-month mark after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, there were only two people still missing, and the city of Kobe was undergoing reconstruction. Even though the extent of damage caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake is far greater, the recovery process is too slow by comparison. I blame it on Tokyo's ineptitude and irresponsibility.
In Nagasaki, an inaugural meeting was held on June 11 by "High School Student Ambassadors of Peace," who will deliver signatures to the United Nations to abolish nuclear weapons. Two of these teen envoys are from Iwate Prefectural Takata Senior High School, whose buildings were washed away in the March tsunami. Masahiro Kikuchi, the school's student council president, said he wanted to thank people around the world for their support. His parents are still missing.
While Nagatacho continues to bicker over the timing of Prime Minister Naoto Kan's resignation, there are people who are quietly doing what they can and should be doing. I hear encouraging news of shops and factories reopening for business, and fishermen heading out to the seas for the first time since the disaster. I am heartened by each light that comes on in the darkness of the night. But it is the responsibility of politicians to bring the dawn to our country. |
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