美国国家公共电台 NPR 日本首相安倍晋三因健康原因宣布辞职(在线收听

Japan's prime minister is doing something truly rare — giving up power when he does not absolutely have to. To grasp just how unusual this is, consider some news from elsewhere. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has been in power 20 years and is changing his country's laws to stay longer. China's president dropped a convention of two terms in office so that he could stay longer. In the United States, the Constitution limits President Trump to two terms at most, but he repeatedly says he should have more. It's one of his lines for owning the libs.

日本首相做了一件非常罕见的事情——在不是绝对必要的情况下放弃权力。为了理解这有多不同寻常,我们来看一下其他地方的情况。俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京已经执政20年,他为了继续延长任期而修改了俄罗斯法律。美国宪法规定特朗普总统最多只能执政两届,但他一再表示,他应该有更多任期。这是他不断重复的言论之一。

Japan's Shinzo Abe leads a party that is still in power. They have not lost an election. But through an interpreter, he says he is leaving due to poor health.

日本首相安倍晋三所领导的政党仍在执政。他们没有输掉大选。但他表示,他是因为健康状况不佳才辞职,下面我们通过翻译来了解一下。

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PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE: (Through interpreter) And so long as I'm not — no longer be able to meet the expectation, the mandate of the people of Japan, I have decided that I should not stay or remain in the position as a prime minister anymore.

日本首相安倍晋三:(通过翻译)因为我不能——再也无法满足日本人民的期望和授权,所以我决定不再担任或继续担任首相一职。

INSKEEP: NPR's Anthony Kuhn has covered East Asia for years and is on the line from Seoul.

因斯基普:NPR新闻的安东尼·库恩多年来一直负责报道东亚新闻,现在他将从首尔和我们连线。

Hey there, Anthony.

你好,安东尼。

ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.

安东尼·库恩连线:你好,史蒂夫。

INSKEEP: When he talks about being unable to meet expectations, what's he talking about?

因斯基普:他刚提到无法满足期望,他指的是什么?

KUHN: Well, he's talking about this chronic inflammatory bowel disease, which ended a previous term as prime minister in 2007. He had earlier said this week that he wanted to manage this condition and keep working. But he said at a press conference today that he found out in June that he had had a relapse. And reporters who've been covering him for a long time say he just looked exhausted. And he said at the presser that he didn't want it to affect his political judgment.

库恩:他指的是他所患的慢性炎性肠道疾病,这一疾病曾迫使他在2007年辞去首相职务。他本周早些时候曾表示,他想控制疾病,继续工作。但他在今天举行的记者会上表示,他在6月份发现疾病复发。长期负责报道安倍相关新闻的记者表示,他看起来很疲惫。安倍在记者会上说,他不希望疾病影响他的政治判断。

He said he thought his health would hold out until they choose a new prime minister, and so there's probably going to be an election to decide that. But it's also important to remember that, before Prime Minister Abe, they had a spate of prime ministers who lasted only about a year, so he did provide some measure of stability.

他表示,他认为在选出新任首相之前,他的健康状况会继续恶化,因此可能会举行选举决定首相人选。但重要的是,我们要记住,在安倍担任首相之前,日本有数任首相都仅执政了一年左右,因此安倍确实提供了一定程度的稳定。

INSKEEP: Yeah, eight years in office in this particular stretch of his prime ministership. What will the effect be of his departure on relations with the United States?

因斯基普:没错,安倍共在任八年时间。他的离开会对日本与美国的关系产生何种影响?

KUHN: Well, Shinzo Abe put this relationship he had with President Trump on display. President Trump visited Japan last year, and Shinzo Abe took him to a sumo wrestling match, a golf game, steaks and burgers — all this to show what a good buddy he was with Trump. And this personal rapport helped them to weather some difficult times in the alliance. There've been a lot of trade frictions. He managed to get out of that without them blowing up.

库恩:安倍晋三展示了他与特朗普总统的关系。特朗普总统去年访问日本期间,安倍晋三带他去看了相扑比赛,安排了高尔夫比赛,并用牛排和汉堡款待他,这一切都表明安倍与特朗普的关系有多好。这种良好的私人关系帮助二人度过了日美联盟的困难时期。两国之间有很多贸易摩擦。他设法在不引爆摩擦的情况下摆脱了困境。

And also, there is pressure from the Trump administration for Japan to pay more for the American troop presence in Japan. So if Abe's successor is to be a strong alliance manager and to have a good rapport with the U.S. president, they're going to have to build it from scratch because there's no one like that on the horizon.

此外,特朗普政府也向日本施压,要求其为驻日美军提供更多经费支持。因此,如果安倍的继任者想成为强硬的同盟管理者,同时与美国总统保持良好关系,那他们就必须从头开始构建关系,因为目前没有这样的人选。

INSKEEP: I want people to know you fly in and out of Japan. You're there all the time. You have been for many years. How has Japan changed during eight years of Abe's leadership?

因斯基普:我要向大家介绍一下,你不断往返于日本。你一直在日本,在那里呆了很多年。在安倍执政的这八年里,日本有何变化?

KUHN: Well, one of the things he wanted to do was to fix the two decades — two-plus decades of economic stagnation that Japan's been in. And sure enough, he presided over a long period of economic growth, but very weak growth. A lot of the gains of this growth went to corporations and shareholders and not wage earners. And now even that growth has been ended by COVID.

库恩:安倍想做的其中一件事是修复日本20多年来的经济停滞。在他执政期间,日本确实出现了长期经济增长,但增长相当疲软。经济增长时的大部分收益都流向了企业和股东,并没有进入工薪阶层的口袋。而现在,就连这种增长也被新冠肺炎终结了。

The other thing is that, you know, Abe is basically a conservative nationalist, and he felt the arrangement imposed on Japan after World War II by the U.S. was keeping it down. So his goal was to amend the constitution to give the government more power, and he failed to do that. And he never got the Japanese public behind him on it.

另一方面,安倍基本上是保守的民族主义者,他认为美国在二战后强加给日本的安排令日本受到了限制。因此,他的目标是修改宪法,赋予政府更多权力,但他未能做到。他在这方面从未赢得日本民众的支持。

INSKEEP: Thanks very much.

因斯基普:非常谢谢你。

NPR's Anthony Kuhn.

以上是NPR新闻的安东尼·库恩带来的报道。

KUHN: You're welcome.

库恩:不客气。

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/npr2020/8/511563.html