今朝のThe Straits Times

ペナンへ向かうフライトの中で読んだThe Straits Timesに例の小沢民主党幹事長がらみの記事がありました。日本特派員のKwan Weng Kinと云う人が書いた記事です。熱帯のまことに小さき国の新聞がキチンと本質を捉えた記事を書いているのを見て少し嬉しかったので貼っておきます。

政治など余り興味はない方なのですが、最近の偏向＆恣意性おびただしい日本の新聞報道はちょっと余りにも気持ち悪いものがあります。海外ではどのような書き方をされているのか興味と時間がある方は読んでみては如何でしょうか。

切り抜きからザクっとタイプしたのでtyposがあったらゴメンナサイ。

FUNDING SCANDAL
Battle of egos and vested interests

Ozawa and public prosecutors lock horns

The kingpin of Japan’s ruling party is being hounded by public prosecutors over alleged political funds violations in a high-profile case that smacks of battle of egos and vested interests.
Outraged by the allegations, Mr Ichiro Ozawa, secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ), who is often described as more powerful than Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, has protested his innocence and accused the prosecutors of seeking to undermine Mr hatoyama’s four-month-old administration.
Mr Ozawa’s secretary and two former aides – one of them lawmaker Tomohiro Ishikawa – were arrested last Friday, a day before a convention of the DPJ and three days before Parliament was to sit.
Such investigative ways, Mr Ozawa, 67, told the convention, could not be tolerated as “it would cast a shadow over the nation’s democracy”.
He swore to wage an “all-out fight” against the prosecutors.
According to Jiji news agency yesterday, prosecutors will question Mr Ozawa over the funding scandal tomorrow. He has agreed to be questioned on a voluntary basis about the scandal.
The three arrested aides were charged with alleged accounting irregularities over a 2004 land deal in a Tokyo suburb which would normally have required no more than the re-submission of accounts to the authorities and a rap on the knuckles.
This week, prosecutors, even targeted Mr Ozawa's wife.
Several former prosecutors, speaking on television had earlier suggested that public prosecutors were "mad" at Mr Ozawa for refusing to submit to voluntary questioning and resorted to the arrests to put pressure on him.
But even more disturbing is the daily barrage of report s in major dailies and on television implying Mr Ozawa and the arrested men are guilty.
Reports, believed to be based on leaks from prosecutors, said Mr Ishikawa had confessed to failing to log a sum of 400 million yen S$6 million) in Mr Ozawa's political funds accounts.
But when lawyers for Mr Ishikawa declared the reports to be false, only one tabloid carried the news. The mainstream media kept mum.
Concerned by the brewing scandal, some DPJ lawmakers have launched a review of the investigations, especially whether prosecutors have flouted the law by apparently leaking real or fictions information to the media aimed at turning public opinion against Mr Ozawa.
Said lawmaker Toshio Ogawa: "For the prosecutors to leak information to the media is unpardonable, given their wide powers to collect data."
Voices questioning the prosecutors' methods and the veracity of media reports against Mr Ozawa have been virtually shut out of newspapers and television. But over the Internet, in blogs and the Twitter microblog, the issue has sparked furious debate.
Lawyer and former prosecutor Nobuo Gohara is one of those that have raised the alarm.
"Testimony that Mr Ozawa had received money from construction firm came from the firm's president, who is in jail for evading taxes and whose testimony in another case had turned out to be unreliable," Mr Gohara noted. "Arresting a lawmaker and attempting to arrest the secretary-general of the ruling party based on such reckless investigations can only be described as insanity."
Mr Ozawa's avowed desire to revamp Japan's bureaucracy and political system has long made him the bane of those seeking to preserve the status quo. He was the subject of a similar probe last March, just when surveys showed that the DJP, which he led at the time, could win the next general election.
In the current instance, the arrests were made just when it seemed that Mr Ozawa was all set to lead the DPJ to victory in July's Upper House polls.
The victory would give the party control over both houses of Parliament, enhancing its ability to bring about reforms.
The Ozawa scandal has triggered concerns over the public prosecutors' apparent impunity to arrest the country's elected representatives in the name of defending justice. They have also been accused of targeting people who seek to overturn established ways of doing things.

RECKLESSNESS

"Arresting a lawmaker and attempting to arrest the secretary-general of the ruling party based on such reckless investigations can only be described as insanity."

Lawyer and former prosecutor Nobuo Gohara