ニュース 2009/01/28 Comment on facilitation of bureaucratic reemployment at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications On January 28, DPJ Next Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Kazuhiro Haraguchi issued the following comment: On January 27, in response to a written question from the DPJ’s Mitsunori Okamoto, the government acknowledged that during the three years from 2006 to 2008 there had been thirty-two cases of facilitated bureaucratic reemployment, or “watari”, in which retired bureaucrats hop from one government-affiliated corporation to another, at eleven government organisations. The largest number of cases, six, occurred at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It goes without saying that the facilitation of “watari” by various government ministries and agencies is in itself a huge problem. Moreover, the fact that the incidence of such cases is greatest in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which takes the lead in formulating the government’s personnel policy, such as changes in pay and control of numbers for government officers, renders us speechless. Furthermore, the number of cases announced by the government is cited as being no more than “the number confirmed at the present time.” It is necessary for us to intensely question the government, in the Diet and elsewhere, as to whether other cases of “watari” facilitation apart from the thirty-two acknowledged ones exist, and furthermore establish the facts regarding the salaries and total amount of retirement payments paid to the former bureaucrats involved in “watari”. Prime Minister Aso has obtained cabinet approval for a government ordinance allowing ministries and agencies to facilitate “watari” and such acts of folly look set to continue in future. The DPJ will bring about a change of government and totally prohibit not only facilitation of “watari” but of the practice of amakudari itself by central government organs.