TOKYO, Jan. 25 -- The deadly Kobe earthquake may have saved the socialists of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama from splitting but has not stopped the flak against his government's tardy handling of the tragedy. 'The quake left disastrous consequences and prevented a split of the Social Democratic Party,' said Tamisuke Watanuki, a prominent member of the Liberal Democratic Party, the dominant partner in the three-party coalition government. Just prior to the Jan. 17 quake that rocked Kobe and Osaka, Murayama's Social Democratic Party faced a mutiny by 24 of its lawmakers in the Diet, Japan's parliament. The impending split threatened the coalition. After the quake, the government faced ridicule about its slowness in reacting and mobilizing army units to help with the rescue. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi deflected charges that the SDP was partly to blame for the belated dispatch of troops for rescue operationns following the quake. 'Nothing could be further from the truth,' said Igarashi at a news conference. 'That's a groundless criticism.' For many years the pacifist socialists refused to even recongize the Japanese armed forces, known as the Self Defense Forces, as constitutional, but turned around this policy after Murayama became prime minister last June. The killer quake claimed more than 5,000 lives, injured more than 26, 000 people and has left 300,000 homeless, causing billions of dollars worth of damage. One of Japan's top business figures, Shoichiro Toyoda, chairman of the powerful Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) forecast the temblor will slow Japan's economic recovery, and criticisized the government for its repsonse.
'The government is making every effort, but looking at the results, its response was not enough,' said Toyoda, who is also chairman of Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker. Toyoda noted that before the quake, which measured 7.2 on the open- ended Richter scale, the Japanese economoy appeared headed for gradual improvement. 'Recovery may be delayed a bit,' said Toyoda, predicting that damage from the disaster may be worse than the 3.8 trillion yen ($30-80 billion) currently being bandied about by private think tanks. But the Governor of the Bank of Japan, Yasuo Matsushita, said the earthquake is unlikely to derail Japan's economic recovery. 'Although quake damage will be enormous and future effects will be no easy task, we have enough reserves to supply materials for reconstruction,' said Matsushita. Rather, he said, once full-scale reconstruction efforts start, they will contribute not only to the recovery of economies in the quake-hit area, but also to the nation's entire economy.
