Shinzo Abe

It was a brazen attack that shocked the world.

On Friday, Shinzo Abe was assassinated by a 41-year old gunman who opened fire on the former prime minister from behind as he delivered a campaign speech. Photographs later showed Abe slumped on the pavement, down and bleeding. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said, as quoted by local reports.

It was an attack that stunned a nation that prides itself as having some of the strictest gun control laws and known in the world as one of the safest countries.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the shooting “a heinous act … barbaric, malicious, and it cannot be tolerated.”

What is happening to the world? For weeks now, we’ve been hearing of violent attacks, mostly in the United States, but more recently, even in Denmark.

Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world. According to a police white paper, there were 21 arrests for the use of firearms in 2020, and 12 of them were gang related. World Health Organization figures show that Japan had just nine firearm-related deaths in 2018, down from 23 the year below. The rate of firearm deaths per 100,000 people is 0.01; for comparison, the US number exceeds four per 100,000, according to the Japan Times.

And yet, a bullet felled the 67-year old Abe who was Japan’s longest serving leader when he resigned in 2020.

All these recent gun violence should be a cautionary tale for the Philippines. The world clearly has become more violent, with news of shootings in schools of young boys and girls more prevalent these days.

Here in our country, ownership of firearms is regulated by the Firearms and Explosives Division of the Philippine National Police. Possession of firearms by the citizens in the Philippines is the exception, not the rule, a mere statutory privilege, not a constitutional right. We should keep it as strict as we can, no skirting around the process, no corruption in getting a license, to ensure that regulation is real.

Democracy

What is happening in many parts of the world is disturbing, and that is the more fundamental issue at hand – respect for human rights and respect for democracy.

How did we get here?

The attack on Abe came days before Japanese voters were set to cast their ballots in the country’s Upper House election. The polls opened yesterday and results are to be out later the same night.

Clearly, the assassination of Abe shows it is also an attack on democracy. Shouldn’t political differences be resolved through the ballot box? Political changes take time, and sometimes the results are frustrating as our very own storied history has shown us, but violence is never the solution.

As I write this, the gunman’s motive isn’t clear yet, but even if it isn’t election-related, it’s still an attack on democracy. Couldn’t there have been any other way to resolve an issue?

Abenomics

Going back to Abe, his was a mixed legacy, but it does not make his death less shocking.

Rody Duterte called him a good, loyal friend. He was the first foreign leader to visit the Philippines after the former president was elected into office in 2016.

At the time, Abe said Japan has been contributing on both the tangible and intangible fronts, centering on the field of infrastructure development in particular, and explained then that Japan intends to develop an even more powerful partnership with the Philippines as a whole.

But Abe was known not just in the Philippines, but throughout the world. He was a towering figure in the global arena and many hailed his Abenomics as an ambitious economic program that many Japanese economists said helped revive their economy following a stagnation at the end of 1989.

The assessment of Abenomics is mixed, with some saying that the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out its gains, but many agreed the economic stimulus strategy succeeded at the time it was needed.

The program involved increasing government spending and implementing structural reforms to revive Japan’s stagnant economy.

This shows the importance of having a serious economic program and the political will to implement it, a lesson for our leaders that in the end, how they pull the country toward economic recovery will be one of their most important legacies.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected].

Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com