Update | Japan’s Abe faces setback as anti-US-base Okinawa mayor gets elected
A Japanese mayor who opposes moving a US military base to his city in Okinawa won a hard-fought re-election battle yesterday, dealing a potential blow to hopes in Washington and Tokyo that the long-delayed plan would move forward.
A city mayor opposed to a plan to relocate a controversial US airbase on Japan’s Okinawa island was re-elected in a hard-fought poll on Sunday, Kyodo news agency said, creating a political headache for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and threatening friction with Washington.
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| The Futenma base in Ginowan on southern Japanese islands of Okinawa. Photo: AP |
Delays in relocating the US Marines’ Futenma air base, a move first agreed between Tokyo and Washington in 1996, have long been an irritant in US-Japan ties and Abe is keen to make progress on the project as he seeks tighter ties with the United States in the face of an assertive China.
Abe’s ties with Washington suffered after the United States expressed “disappointment” with his December 26 visit to Yasukuni Shrine, a pilgrimage that further strained relations with China and South Korea, which see the Tokyo shrine to Japan’s war dead as a symbol of the country’s past militarism.
Susumu Inamine, a staunch opponent of the relocation plan, was assured re-election as mayor of the Okinawa city of Nago, Kyodo said, citing projections shortly after the polls closed.
Inamine, who vowed to block construction of the base by denying permits for the project, declared victory on Sunday night before 500 supporters at his campaign headquarters. Inamine got 19,839 votes, versus pro-base challenger Bunshin Suematsu, who received 15,684.
Inamine has pledged to use his local authority block the relocation of the functions of Futenma from a populous part of central Okinawa to Nago’s coastal Henoko area. Many Okinawans want the base off their island completely.
His main opponent had backed the plan and ran with strong support from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
But the plan got a boost last month when Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima gave the go-ahead for land reclamation to build the new base, whose runways would extend over water from the US military’s existing Camp Schwab. Opponents filed a lawsuit last week seeking to invalidate the governor’s approval.