Taipei Times

In El Salvador, for the first time ever in Latin America, a former political-military organization that tried to gain power through the barrel of a gun has achieved its aims through the ballot box.

Although the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua did win a semi-legitimate election in 1984, it had reached power five years earlier by overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship. By 2006, when Daniel Ortega was finally re-elected, the old Sandinista Front of 1979 was unrecognizable.

Why should Goldman Sachs and George Bush expect Japan to reconcile its financial accounts and non-performing loans when it is clear that Japan's political architecture inhibits accountability on any front, particularly in matters of Japan's historical memory?