An ability to listen to front-line workers and those in responsible positions is the hallmark of a nation’s leader. A competent political leader must also able to express his or her thoughts effectively to rally people.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida does not appear to be a good communicator if his remarks and answers in Diet debate during the current session so far are any indication.

The first round of Lower House Budget Committee sessions for parties to quiz Kishida and administration officials on policy agenda issues has run its course. In his policy speech at the outset of the Diet session, Kishida vowed to adopt better policy options whenever they emerge and said he would show no hesitation in doing so. He followed up on that promise by getting to grips with the issue of children of recently divorced or separated parents who had slipped through the safety net on a 100,000-yen ($872) government handout paid to households last year.

During Q&A sessions related to the issue last week, Kishida said he would ask local governments to consider ways to use subsidies for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic to provide backdated payouts. But during the Budget Committee sessions, he shifted position and said his government will consider revising the payout plan. Kishida’s abrupt change of course was triggered by arguments it is the central government’s responsibility to present a unified policy response to a problem to avoid inequality between different areas.

In contrast, Kishida has been anything but flexible in dealing with a scandal concerning irregularities in the way the infrastructure ministry collected and compiled key construction data.

During the extraordinary Diet session late last year, the prime minister said the statistics in question for the period since January 2020 had already been corrected. But it has since been revealed that some local governments failed to rectify the practice of rewriting statistics concerning construction orders received by construction companies, which resulted in double counting.

Kishida kept rejecting opposition calls for him to retract his remarks. Even though he said he was not armed with all the relevant facts at that time, Kishida should still be held responsible for giving, albeit unintentionally, false information on the issue to the Diet, the watchdog body to monitor actions of the administrative branch. He has a duty to provide a detailed explanation of what transpired and update it as necessary.

To avoid handing opposition parties ammunition to attack his administration, Kishida mostly repeated his past responses when answering questions posed by party representatives. He did not change his approach even after the start of the Budget Committee sessions where he was obliged to answer each question on its own merits. 

Kishida will be rightly criticized for evading debate and disregarding the importance of the roles of the Diet if he focuses on avoiding errors in responding to questions.

Surging cases of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus caused a serious shortage of COVID-19 antigen test kits in some areas. Kishida stressed that the government has secured three weeks worth of supplies to meet national demand and is urging manufacturers to ramp up production. But he failed to address the causes of the backlogs or possible means to tackle them.

Delays in the rollout of COVID-19 booster jabs mean that the rate of those who have received a third inoculation lies at less than 2 percent of the population. As of right now, Kishida said that 84 percent of local governments can give booster shots to elderly people who want them by the end of February as planned. But this outlook does not erase doubts about whether the program will be effective in tackling the explosive growth in cases.

Answers to questions at the Diet should be intended not just for lawmakers of both camps but also for the public. A political leader’s communication skills are measured by how effectively he or she can empathize with people’s anxieties and offer convincing explanations about the government’s policies.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 27