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2012 January 25 - 31 [POLITICS]

Why didn’t gov’t take minutes of post-3.11 discussions?

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

It was found that the Democratic Party-led government had not taken the minutes of discussions or even summarized the discussions dealing with the 3.11 disaster, making it difficult to examine how the government’s taskforces discussed and decided on what emergency measures to take.

Not only in the period of time immediately after the disaster but for a long time, the government failed to keep records of meetings. Could this have been due to an intent to conceal information?

No meeting minutes were taken at organizations which played central roles in responding to the 3.11 disaster and the nuclear accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima plant. They include the emergency disaster control headquarters, the nuclear emergency response headquarters, and the victims’ life support team. These taskforces neither took minutes nor wrote down the key points made in their discussions.

The government-TEPCO Integrated Response Office made summaries of discussions but did not take meeting minutes. Ten out of 15 governmental institutions involved in the disaster response had no written records of any of their meetings. Three did not even offer a summary.

Without meeting minutes, it is impossible to look into what the government knew of the damage and the criteria used to issue evacuation instructions to local residents. As for the nuclear accident, to cool the crippled reactors was not possible because the external power supply was out. Under such an anomaly, fire trucks were blindly discharging fresh water and seawater into the reactors. However, no one can analyze the decision-making process because no meeting minutes exist.

Minutes and summaries of governmental meetings are regarded as official documents. These are “publicly shared intellectual resources” by law. Any administrative organ should produce documents in order to determine and assess the decision-making process as well as to disclose pertinent information to the public.

The officials may have neglected to record the proceedings of the meetings so that they could avoid being criticized in future for their negligence and irresponsibility. A thorough investigation into why the government did not have meeting minutes taken is necessary.