Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister, has given his support to former National Public Safety Commission chairman Hachiro Okonogi as a candidate for Yokohama\u2019s upcoming mayoral election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Japan.- In a recent interview, Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister has said he will support\u00a0Hachiro Okonogi<\/a> in the upcoming Yokohama mayoral elections. Okonogi has spoken\u00a0against Yokohama’s<\/strong> IR plans<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suga also encouraged the\u00a0Liberal Democratic Party<\/a>\u00a0to support Okonogi, although pro-IR Yokohama mayor\u00a0Fumiko Hayashi<\/a>\u00a0has confirmed she intends to run for a fourth term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suga said: \u201cI thought\u00a0there was no other person who could be the face of Yokohama<\/strong>. I will support [Hachiro Okonogi] with all my strength.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okonogi<\/a>\u00a0has said that if he becomes mayor, “the first thing” he will do is stop Yokohama’s integrated resort plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although\u00a0Okonogi is not personally against the IR development<\/strong>, he said he could see that residents were opposed to the city government\u2019s plan. \u201cWe have not gained the trust of the citizens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite Suga’s support, local media reports believe Hayashi could win due to a large number of anti-IR candidates<\/strong>. However, due to the large number of people who are against the development of an IR, she is unlikely to win over 50 per cent of the votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anti-IR candidates include Takeharu Yamanaka<\/strong>, who has been chosen as the candidate to represent the CDPJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yamanaka is 48 years old and works as a professor at Yokohama City University<\/strong>. He is specialized in public health and medical statistics and has recently been working on anti-Covid-19 countermeasures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s known to disagree with the development of an integrated resort, arguing that it could cause issues with gambling addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other candidates include Masataka Ota<\/a> and Akiko Fujimura<\/a>. The first is 75 years old and a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party. He has been elected to the Yokohama City Council for 11 four-year periods<\/strong> since the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ota said: \u201cIf I become the mayor of Yokohama, the casino issue will disappear <\/strong>that very day. To put it plainly, I will not do casinos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fujimura<\/strong>\u00a0is the representative director of an animal welfare group. She supported\u00a0current mayor Fumiko Hayashi<\/strong>\u00a0in the 2017 election. She has said she will declare the\u00a0immediate cancellation of the Yokohama IR project<\/strong>\u00a0if she becomes mayor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister, has given his support to former National Public Safety Commission chairman Hachiro Okonogi as a candidate for Yokohama\u2019s upcoming mayoral election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":20877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The upcoming Yokohama mayoral election introduces significant political risk to the city's Integrated Resort (IR) development, with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga endorsing anti-IR candidate Hachiro Okonogi. This endorsement challenges incumbent pro-IR mayor Fumiko Hayashi, who faces a crowded field of anti-IR candidates, including Takeharu Yamanaka, Masataka Ota, and Akiko Fujimura. The election outcome will critically determine the viability of a major gaming vertical expansion in Japan.","focusai_entities":"Yoshihide Suga, Hachiro Okonogi, National Public Safety Commission, Liberal Democratic Party, Fumiko Hayashi, Takeharu Yamanaka, CDPJ, Yokohama City University, Masataka Ota, Constitutional Democratic Party, Akiko Fujimura","focusai_location":"Japan, Yokohama","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.85), compliance_legal (0.75), operator_casino (0.95), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.8), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Yokohama IR Project Future","query":"What are the specific implications for the regulatory compliance timeline and potential GGR projections if an anti-IR candidate wins the Yokohama mayoral election, and how might this influence other Japanese prefectures considering IR development?"},{"label":"Political Risk Assessment","query":"How does Prime Minister Suga's endorsement of an anti-IR candidate alter the political risk assessment for foreign direct investment in Japan's gaming vertical, particularly concerning the stability of future policy frameworks and governance?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16338,154],"tags":[23632],"class_list":["post-20875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia-news","category-legislation-news","tag-integrated-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20875"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20891,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20875\/revisions\/20891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}