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Candidates opposed to a plan to relocate a key US military base within Okinawa gained a majority in the prefectural assembly election on Sunday, giving a boost to Governor Takeshi Onaga’s efforts to block construction of the new base in the island prefecture.
Thirty-one candidates against the relocation plan, including two who won by default, gained seats in the 48-seat assembly. Candidates backing the governor also formed a majority with 27 gaining seats.
“It is a big victory,” Onaga told reporters on Monday, saying his calls for blocking the base’s relocation within Okinawa had “won support”.
“We will continue to work on the issue in the current manner,” he said.
The outcome of the election reflects intensifying anti-US base sentiment among residents of Okinawa, home to the bulk of US military facilities in Japan, in the wake of a US base worker’s alleged involvement in the death of a local woman last month.
Such sentiment was further fuelled after a US Navy sailor was arrested early on the day of the vote on suspicion of drink-driving and injuring two people in the prefecture in a car accident.
The outcome of the election could have an impact on the future of the planned relocation of the Marines’ Air Station Futenma from a densely populated area of Ginowan to a less densely populated coastal area in Nago.
US officer arrested in Okinawa for drink-driving
Seventy-one people filed candidacies for the 48 assembly seats up for grabs. Because only two people filed in the Nago electoral district, to which two seats are allotted, they won by default, according to the prefectural election board.
Activists, including some who are covered in mock shrounds, take part in a demonstration to protest against the US military presence in Okinawa, Japan, outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C. on May 26, 2016. Photo: AFP
Voter turnout stood at 53.31 per cent, slightly up from the record low of 52.49 per cent in the previous election.
Before the election, the bloc backing Onaga, including members of the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, had 23 seats, while the groups not allied with the governor, such as the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party, held 23 seats. Two seats were unoccupied.
The pro-governor camp zeroed in on the base issue, saying the latest crime against a local woman occurred due to the prefecture’s hosting of US bases and calling for all of them to be removed from Okinawa.
‘Anger is growing’: Okinawa murder prompts city councils to vote for smaller US bases
The anti-Onaga camp tried to emphasise its economic policies but was forced to grapple with the heightened interest in base issues among the electorate.
Regardless of the result of the Okinawa election, the central government plans to push forward with the Futenma base’s transfer to the Henoko coastal site in Nago, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said on Monday.
“We think it’s necessary to move the base to Henoko without further delay,” Nakatani told reporters during a visit to Myanmar.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference the same day that the government is unchanged in its view that moving the base to Henoko is the only solution “when taking into account the need to maintain the deterrent capacity of the Japan-US alliance and eliminate the hazards of the Futenma site.”
The central and Okinawa prefectural governments remain at loggerheads over the issue, even though they have dropped lawsuits in which they were suing each other and resumed discussions under a court-mediated settlement reached in March.
As a result of the settlement, the central government has suspended landfill work at the Henoko site.
(SCMP)
