Yoshiro Mori the 83-year-old former Japanese prime minister has resigned from his position as president of the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee less than 6 months before the games are due to start. Mori’s crime? Making spectacularly unwise comments during a discussion of how to increase women’s representation on the committee.
‘When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying,’ he was reported as saying.
Along with a litany of other problems and embarrassments, Mori is the second senior Olympic official to quit due to a scandal. Mori-gate bookends neatly the resignation of the former president of the Japanese Olympic Committee Tsunekazu Takeda over corruption allegations connected to Tokyo’s initial bid. An unnamed government source recently described the Tokyo Olympics as ’doomed’. Perhaps he should have said cursed.
The story being spun about Mori is that he a relic of a bygone age with hopelessly archaic attitudes.
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