Suga's Departure A Preordained Outcome, Claims Sidelined Official

A former bureaucrat who was relegated from his post in 2014 after confronting current Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga over the hometown tax payment system, which Suga proposed during his time as internal affairs minister and expanded after becoming chief Cabinet secretary, has called Suga's abrupt plans to step down a preordained outcome.

Photo Insert: The Suga Cabinet

The comment from Akihide Hirashima, 63, a former director general at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications who currently works as a specially appointed professor at Rikkyo University, followed Suga's recent announcement that he will not seek reappointment as leader of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- after only around a year as prime minister, Shunsuke Sekiya and Takayuki Kanamori reported for Mainichi Japan.

"Maintaining power became Suga's goal, and up until the end, it was unclear what he wanted to do. It was a foreordained outcome," Hirashima said. Suga told reporters on Sept. 3 that he would not run in the upcoming LDP leadership election because he wanted "to concentrate on preventing the spread of coronavirus infections, which I have promised to the people."

Hirashima, who saw these comments on television, remarked, "I feel like he's only now saying what he should have been saying a year ago. He portrayed his crisis management as being strong, but he was always a step behind when it came to coronavirus countermeasures."

Hirashima previously faced off with Suga over the hometown tax payment system, which allows taxpayers to receive income and residential tax deductions in return for contributions to the municipality of their choice.

Concerns had been raised about the system within the internal affairs ministry due to intensifying competition over high-priced gifts offered in return for taxpayers' contributions.

In 2014, when Suga was chief Cabinet secretary, he requested that the upper limit for tax deductions be doubled, and Hirashima, who pointed out problems with this in his capacity as director general of the ministry's Local Tax Bureau, was removed from his position.

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