Naha, Japan (dpa) – Residents of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa punished government-backed incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima on Sunday, in a result widely seen as an indictment of his policies over a planned US military base.
In December last year, Nakaima approved a landfill project to create space for the base, reversing a 2010 election pledge to have the facility moved entirely off the island, 1,600 kilometres south-west of Tokyo.
The new base is intended to be a replacement for an existing US facility in the centre of Ginowan city on Okinawa.
Many islanders feel Nakaima’s decision last year “impaired Okinawa’s dignity and pride,” Ryukyu Shimpo, a local newspaper, said in an editorial on Monday.
“Okinawa has never allowed a military base to be built,” incoming governor Takeshi Onaga, a conservative former mayor of the Okinawan capital of Naha, told broadcaster NHK after his resounding victory.
Onaga argued the southernmost prefecture, which accounts for only 0.6 per cent of Japan’s total land mass, has to house 74 per cent of the US military installations in Japan. He says other parts of the country have to share the burden if the country believes the Japan-US Security Treaty is so important.
Local opinion surveys showed about 80 per cent of Okinawans are against the construction of a military facility on Okinawa that would take over the functions of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan.
Critics say Tokyo put enormous pressure on Nakaima as it had done on previous local leaders.
Nakaima bowed to the pressure, and that helped galvanize islanders and unite them, said Hiroshi Hosaka, an author and former journalism professor at the University of the Ryukyus.
Onaga said he defeated the incumbent with the help of “all Okinawa” as he was able to garner broad-based support from conservatives to liberals and the Communist Party.
Onaga said he was glad to see the emergence of such a “new political style” this time around as the issue of the US military presence had long divided the island.
His victory meant “Okinawans exerted the right to self-determination,” Ryukyu Shimpo said.
“The crushing defeat was expected as the LDP was using Nakaima to go ahead with the project,” said Minoru Morita, a Tokyo-based political analyst.
A big failure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was “they could not replace the 75-year-old Nakaima,” who became unpopular after approving the plans in December, Hosaka said.
“He looked exhausted and he was in a wheelchair” in December, Hosaka added.
The New Komeito, the junior coalition partner of the LDP, decided not to endorse Nakaima though the party had done so twice before.
Both Onaga and Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine vowed to block the relocation of Futenma within Okinawa.
However, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Monday Tokyo would carry out the project.
Japan and the United States agreed in 1996 to close Futenma and Tokyo has tried to build a new facility in exchange for the closure. But nothing has materialized for the last 18 years.
“Tokyo has long kept telling Washington ‘We can do it. We can do it,” but they have not been able to do anything,” Morita said.
“That could certainly complicate Japan-US relations and have an adverse effect on the realignment of the US military in Japan,” he said.
Takehiko Kambayashi 