August 1, 2016 4:28 am
Tokyo elected its first female governor, putting Yuriko Koike in charge of the city’s troubled preparations for the 2020 Olympic Games after she defied prime minister Shinzo Abe and the political establishment to run for the post.
Ms Koike — a former TV newscaster who was also the first woman to serve as Japan’s defence minister — won a resounding victory on Sunday, receiving 2.9m votes. Ms Koike, who ran as an independent, will become one of Japan’s most powerful female politicians in history. Her victory is also a rare sign of limits to the prime minister’s power.
Mr Abe’s government had refused to endorse Ms Koike, even though she was a member of parliament from his ruling Liberal Democratic party, and had recruited former communications minister Hiroya Masuda to run against her.
Ms Koike will take over preparations for the 2020 Olympics, which are already plagued by rows over the cost of the stadium and a plagiarism scandal over its logo. While Japan’s capital will now have a powerful figurehead as it prepares to host the games, there is also potential for political conflict as the city’s assembly is dominated by the LDP.
Addressing delighted supporters in the district of Ikebukuro, 64-year-old Ms Koike vowed to push forward with forming an administration. “I want to make a better administration than before, better than there has ever been before,” she said.
The final tally in the city of 13.6m showed Ms Koike winning 2.9m votes, surpassing Mr Masuda’s 1.8m. Veteran journalist Shuntaro Torigoe, who was backed by a number of opposition parties, won 1.35m votes.
A speaker of English and Arabic who graduated from Cairo University, Ms Koike was first elected to parliament in 1992 after working as the anchor of a popular business TV show. She was appointed environment minister by then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2003, helping to popularise the ‘Cool Biz’ style of dressing down in humid summers, in order to save energy by using less air conditioning.
She was also one of Mr Koizumi’s so-called assassins in the 2005 general election, running in a different parliamentary district to defeat an opponent of postal privatisation. She became defence minister in Mr Abe’s first administration in 2007 but only served a few months before resigning amid feuds with colleagues and a scandal over leaks of classified information from the ministry.
Mr Abe did not bring Ms Koike back in his second administration in 2012, however, reportedly because she backed a rival candidate against him in the LDP’s leadership election. The prime minister will now have to work with Ms Koike on the Tokyo Olympics, a project that will define both of their legacies.