Into The Darkness

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

Into the darkness
Soon you'll be sinking
What are you doing?
What can you be thinking?

- Graham Nash, "Into the Darkness" (1982)

Here is a trio for the ages...and it sure as heck is not Crosby, Stills & Nash.

On the left is Yamaoka Kenji, the yes-man who makes all other yes-men look good by comparison (and who has redefined the verb "to hover"); in the center Ozawa Ichiro ("It's not about me. Oh, who do I think I am kidding? It's always about me!); and to the right Suzuki Muneo, who is an entire library of bad.

This is a photo from the grand opening of the Nagata-cho offices of the Kokumin seikatsu ga dai'ichi to, the People's Life First Party (Corey Wallace had a way better translation of the party name). The acronym for the party's English name is LF.

Everything about yesterday's LF headquarters opening screams, "We have no money!"

- the cheesy sans-serif font of the party name (J) -- though the graphic designer does deserve some credit for having the dot in koku in red.

- the even cheesier party logo, which is the Democratic Party of Japan's logo turned on its side, in green, with the characters sei and katsu inside the circles.

- the unbelievably cheesy two-page pdf of the party's program (J). No, I am not kidding, this is the actual document, courtesy LF Acting President (daihyo daiko) Yamaoka Kenji's blog post about the opening.

- the tiny bottles of green tea, cans of oolong tea and whatever it is that the person in the foreground is holding up at the ceremonial toast:

- the absence of a URL in any of the images of the opening. It is hard to believe -- no, it is impossible to believe -- but after a month since breaking away from the DPJ, the LF, a party with 49 members, still does not have its own website.

- the presence according press reports of 40 members of the Diet at the unveiling, including members from Nihon Daiichi/True Democrats -- meaning that 20% of the LF's Diet contingent did not show up at the grand opening.(J)

As Aurelia George Mulgan noted even before the dust had settled, the July 2 breakaway from the DPJ marked the first time Ozawa walked out of a party without the party's cash hoard in hand. Since LF was not existence on January 1 of this year, it received not a single yen of the more than 8.3 billion yen in public campaign finance handed out on July 20 (J). Indeed, LF, should it choose to accept public funding, will not be receiving its first dollop of cash until April 2013. (J)

While the majority of LF members are either still enamored of Ozawa or at least see an advantage of going along with the charade, more than a few must be sitting at their Diet desks, their head in their hands, asking, "What have I done?"

Image credits:
Top: Jiji Press
Middle: Hokkaido Shimbun
Bottom: Jiji Press