Shoichi Nakagawa resigned on Tuesday (Feb 17) as Japan’s Finance Minister following his embarrassing behaviour at a news conference during the G7 meeting in Rome…
Nakagawa was slurring his words and appeared to be out of focus; he later apologised for his behaviour, but denied he was drunk and attributed the situation to overdosed of cold medicine instead (which is later revealed as a possible combo of both)… obviously the apology and explanation were not enough to save his job.
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Politicians of the past have had much worse behavior ignored by their peers and were allowed to stay in office and accomplished much. I understand leaders are expected to uphold certain images but this is a little too far. He was on cold medicine, big deal. It’s something that could be excused and would have been decades ago.
And as much as I don’t like most of them, politicians are still human and it seems today even the ones who can do their job well are critisized over the smallest and things.
As far as the opposition party calling for his resignation, that’s just opportunistic partisan politics in action and it’s more of a disgrace than the minister slurring his words.
I am just curious why his officers/assistants allowed him to attend the conference when he was in such state.
Good question. Possibly he had no personal contact with his assistants before arriving so they may not have known… but who knows? Obviously if it was cold medicine he was on it was only a short time before the meeting that he probably took it. For all we know the medicine may not have taken effect until just before he walked in the door. Then again, as your article mentioned maybe there was a little bit of drinking beforehand as well. Cheers, lol.