Screening of candidates from Democratic Party of Japan for Tokyo gubernatorial election in April is not going well. Shiro Asano, the former Governor of Miyagi Prefecture is now one most possible candidate, but he is not so eager to accept the candidacy at the moment. Several other candidates including some famous TV casters who were asked to be the candidate by DPJ also denied the possibility.
Naoto Kan, Deputy Representative of DPJ and Seiji Maehara, the former Representative of DPJ are also included in the possible candidates. It seems that there exists some possibility for Seiji Maehara to accept the candidacy but Naoto Kan seems to have no such intention at all.
Shintarou Ishihara, the Governor of Tokyo will run again and he is not quite so strong as before for he has several issues concerning spending of travel expenses for his fourth son and entertainment expenses from public fund.But he still keeps more than fifty percent support from citizen of Tokyo according to a recent popular vote for his strong leadership and policy implementation capacity. His proposal to hold the second Olympic Game in Tokyo also seems to have a good support from
electorates in Tokyo.
Regardless such situation in Tokyo, the gubernatorial election in April is very important for DPJ and they must win in this election to win the following House of Representative election in July. If they could win in April, they could win in July as well.
From this point of view, I wonder why DPJ is still wondering so much to select a candidate for the gubernatorial election. According to my belief they must select either Naoto Kan or Seiji Maehara as a candidate. Naoto Kan seems to be the best choice and several mass media forecast that DPJ could win in the election if Naoto Kan run for it. I agree with that view personally. He may be the only one candidate who could win against Shintarou Ishihara in all respects.
Nevertheless, Naoto Kan seems to have no intention to run for the election fortunately. Ichirou Ozawa, Representative of DPJ also denied the possibility of his candidacy saying Naoto Kan is very necessary man as a top executive of the Party. But I think the message is wrong.
It is the day of local autonomy. One typical example is that the Government itself is now starting to discuss possible introduction of Dosyusei(regional system) in this country in near future. The Prime Minister will be elected from governors of regions in the future as we see now in US.
I am very sorry if Naoto Kan and Ozawa lack this kind of view. It is very possible that Naoto Kan will be able to be the Prime Minister of Japan after he worked as the governor of Tokyo for one term or two.
DPJ should select this option if they wish to win in the election in April and in July.
I am not necessarily a dedicated supporter for DPJ. But I do hope that the party should take the power once in Japanese politics replacing Liberal Democratic Party. This is very necessary to improve the quality of democracy and politics in Japan.
It is my sincere hope that DPJ could now make a right decision now on the selection of a candidate for coming election in April.
tad
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