Japan Press Weekly

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2015 January 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

Anti-base Okinawa governor given cold shoulder treatment by Tokyo

The central government and the ruling party have given a cold reception to Okinawa Governor Onaga Takeshi, who won the November gubernatorial election by pledging to oppose the Japanese and U.S. governments’ plan to construct a new U.S. base in the prefecture.

At a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Research Commission for the Promotion and Development of Okinawa on January 8, the national government announced its plan to cut the budget for Okinawa development by around 10% from 350.1 billion yen in FY 2014.

Successive Okinawa governors have been given the opportunity to make requests at the commission meeting. The LDP did not invite Onaga this year.

During his visit to Tokyo from January 6, Onaga tried to meet Agriculture Minister Nishikawa Koya to make a request regarding the subsidies for sugarcane farmers, but the minister refused to meet with the governor.

At the end of 2013, the then Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu approved the plan to construct a new U.S. base in the prefecture by breaking his campaign promise to oppose the base construction. The national government decided to allocate 350.1 billion yen for measures to promote Okinawa in FY 2014, up by 50 billion yen from the previous fiscal year. In August 2014, in a budget request for FY 2015, the government proposed a 379.4 billion yen Okinawa budget. However, after the anti-base candidate won the November gubernatorial election, Tokyo instantly decided to tighten the purse strings for Okinawa. This clearly indicates that the government used the Okinawa budget as incentive to have Okinawa accept the base construction plan.