Political Discord

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 1, 1999 | by Stephen Goode, | Eli Lehrer

It may come as a surprise that, after all these months of Monicagate, the Japanese far outpace Americans when it comes to concluding that their government is mendacious and the profession of politics so polluted with corruption that there's nothing to be done about it.

According to an international survey of voters undertaken in mid-December by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, 75 percent of Japanese who responded to the poll classified their politicians as crooks. Only 32 percent of Britons and 30 percent of the Americans polled made this claim about their political leaders.

When asked if they thought their vote made a difference, 66 percent of Britons and 63 percent of Americans in the poll said yes, they believed their vote did make a difference. But only 40 percent of the Japanese polled said they believed their vote mattered at all, according to a dispatch from Reuters.

Summing up the politics of Japan, Asahi Shimbun concluded: "The most noteworthy message here is that of apathy."