Hyogo Prefecture, It’s Not Right] “Severe Strain” and “Unusual Stress” Created by Hyogo Governor Motohiko Saito’s Transformation
The first part of the article titled “Limitations in Protecting Governor Saito Amidst Resignations of Close Aides” covered the unusual situation where close aides of Governor Motohiko Saito of Hyogo Prefecture have been repeatedly reporting health issues. The confusion in the prefectural administration shows no signs of subsiding.
Various allegations against Governor Motohiko Saito (46) have been exposed through accusations from prefectural employees, leading to a major upheaval in Hyogo Prefecture. The governor maintains a firm stance, stating, “My way of taking responsibility is to push forward with the prefectural administration with all my might.” With the core executives who supported the administration leaving, the remaining staff are exhausted, dealing with leftover tasks and complaints.
The biggest issue is not the governor’s “requesting behavior” or “power harassment suspicions” exposed in the accusation documents, but the fact that employees have taken their own lives and the prefectural administration has stagnated due to the governor’s and prefecture’s response. What is the current state of the prefectural administration? We will examine this through various testimonies.
What staff face daily are the persistent protest and complaint calls about the governor. The calls are handled by the Public Relations and Hearing Division, but there are reports of more than 200 calls a day. A prefectural official says, “The volume is so overwhelming that other departments sometimes assist in handling them.”
“Almost every day, the phone rings non-stop from morning till night. A third of these calls are requests to ‘Put Governor Saito on the line.’ The staff are lamenting that the stress is driving them ‘crazy.’ There are also many calls asking to connect to the ‘Ishin no Kai’ who opposed the Hundred Committee. Since the Public Relations and Hearing Division cannot handle these, the Parliamentary Affairs Office takes them, and Hyogo Ishin executives sometimes respond in the faction’s meeting room. Most of the content is questions like ‘Why doesn’t Governor Saito resign?’”
Governor Saito promotes himself as a “reformist” and boasted to various newspapers last year saying, “I started or achieved more than 90% of the promises made in the gubernatorial election.” Although he has an image of being well-versed in policy due to his background of graduating from the University of Tokyo and joining the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, there are doubts within the prefecture.
“Governor Saito claimed to have achieved or started 171 out of 173 promises, but he has removed the promise list from his own website, so no one can verify if these promises were truly fulfilled. It has become a situation where the claim itself counts. There have been past instances where promises like ‘doubling the number of severe illness beds’ and ‘allowing vaccination for all vaccines at medical institutions’ during the COVID-19 pandemic were quickly abandoned. This tendency to cover up has attracted criticism,” said a prefectural employee.
