Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo’s flippant governor-easily won re-election last week.
Ishihara ran as an independent but was effectively supported by the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito. The Democratic Party of Japan did not field a candidate due to recent poor public approval ratings for Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is DPJ president. Watanabe, 51, was backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly members of the DPJ.
The Japanese Communist Party endorsed Koike, 50. Seven other candidates also ran.
After he was assured of winning Sunday night, Ishihara said he would continue to enhance antidisaster measures during his fourth term, and suggested people should stop playing pachinko to conserve electricity.
“If you ask me what I would do after winning a fourth term, I would say I’ll keep doing the same [as I have until now],” Ishihara said in his Tokyo office. “I’ll strengthen our measures against disasters. Tokyo is Japan’s driving force. If Tokyo comes to a halt, Japan will come to a halt as well.
“Japan won’t survive unless we rein in our selfish desires and live more humbly. Let’s get all Japanese people pushing in the same direction.”
Voter turnout in the Tokyo election was 57.8 percent, 3.45 points higher than the previous election.
With 99 percent of votes counted, Ishihara had garnered 2,608,318 ballots to Higashikokubaru’s 1,682,874. Watanabe had 1,002,909 votes and Koike 620,309.
Ishihara is LDP- and currently DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) holds the Prime Minister and the Lower and Upper house of the Diet. No one in DPJ is taking Ishihara’s re-election as a good sign. However, as I noted previously, since Ishihara can alaways be counted on to open his mouth and say really outrageous and stupid things, its good news for comics, newspaper pundits and disgruntled Gaijin bloggers. Fucked Gaijin notes that it gives us, “Four more years of Blinky. 4 more years of that dried-up crapsack. Kokubara had the most votes among voters age 20-40, but Blinky was the far-ahead winner among the 70+ crowd.” As you can tell-he is not a fan.
The S.O. is not amused-she says it long past bedtime for the man. Of course she hasn’t voted in a Tokyo election in probably 15 years since its been at least that long since she lived in Tokyo-to.
More for me to write about I guess.