The sitting governor of Osaka prefecture in Japan and the incumbent mayor of Osaka city, respectively increased their number of received votes after fresh polls.
Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura and mayor Hideyuki Yokoyama are members of the Osaka Restoration Association in that metropolis (pictured), which is in turn linked to the national grouping, the Japan Innovation Party.
Both men have been backers of the local policy of having an integrated resort (IR) with casino. The under-construction, JPY1.51-trillion (US$9.72-billion currently) MGM Osaka is due to open in 2030.
Mr Yoshimura got just over 3.02 million votes in the latest governorship poll on Sunday, versus in April 2023, just under 2.44 million votes.
Mr Yokoyama this time received 830,257 votes in the mayoral election the same day. In April 2023 he got 655,802 votes.
According to GGRAsia’s Japan correspondent, in the latest ballots, no major parties other than the Osaka Restoration Association, fielded candidates.
The Sunday elections followed both officials resigning last month amid their respective terms of office.
According to GGRAsia’s Japan correspondent, their move was to seek a public mandate for design of an initiative known locally as the “Osaka metropolis plan”.
According to The Mainichi, a Japanese newspaper, the plan seeks to make “Osaka into a second capital by reorganising it into an urban hub akin to Tokyo”.
The Japan Times reported on Sunday that such a plan would involve “merging Osaka city’s wards into a Tokyo-like government structure”. It would however require a local referendum, which the news outlet said would be the third such referendum on the topic. Two previous ones were narrowly rejected by voters.
Casino-policy backer Sanae Takaichi of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – who became in October Japan’s first female prime minister – won on Sunday a ‘supermajority’ in the national parliament’s snap election.
Japan Innovation increased its own seat count by two, to 36, in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives. It was proportionately a much smaller gain than that for the LDP.
