JCP member candidate put up a good fight in Higashi Osaka mayoral election

In the Higashi Osaka mayoral election in Osaka Prefecture on June 30, the incumbent Mayor Nagao Junzo (a Japanese Communist Party member) failed to win re-election.

Nagao, who was recommended by the Association for a Bright Higashi Osaka City (consisting of the JCP, trade unions, and citizens organizations, and supported by the New Socialist Party) got 65,508 or 35.8 percent of the vote.

Elected was a candidate recommended by the Komei Party, the Liberal Democratic Party's local branch, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Conservative Party, and an anti-communist special interest group called "Kaido" or the "Buraku Liberation League."

On the election results, JCP Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi at a press conference in the Diet Building on July 1 said that Nagao's defeat was a matter of regret but that he put up a good fight, overcoming the numerical inferiority based on the basic strength of parties supporting him.

In the 2001 House of Councilors election, the parties which in the mayoral election supported other candidates than Nagao got about five times more votes than the JCP, but in the latest mayoral election the total votes of the two candidates were only twice as many as Nagao's.

Such election results reflected the citizens' appreciation of Nagao, Ichida pointed out, who in the four years of his first term as the mayor largely eliminated corruption and initiated many measures to help small- and medium-sized businesses and promote welfare programs, despite the JCP being the minority in the city assembly.

As the reason of Nagao's failure in the election, Ichida said that Nagao's camp was unsuccessful in sweeping away the adverse effects of the anti-Communist and anti-Nagao demagogical campaign which was probably carried out by the Kaido, the Komei Party, and Soka Gakkai which is Komei Party's religious body. (end)