Japan Press Weekly

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2012 February 1 - 7 [OKINAWA]

Disputed Okinawa Defense Bureau director meddled in past elections as well

Okinawa Defense Bureau director Manabe Ro was found out to have interfered in national and local elections held in Okinawa for the past five years.

This was revealed through a hearing about Manabe’s lecture on the upcoming Okinawa’s Ginowan City mayoral election. The hearing was conducted by Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki and Parliamentary Senior Vice-Minister of Defense Watanabe Shu on February 2 in the Diet building.

Watanabe reported that the defense ministry’s Okinawa bureau chief on each occasion an election was held between 2006 and 2011 called a meeting to urge high-ranking bureau officials to vote.

When the September 2010 assembly election was held in Nago City, the chosen relocation site for the Futenma base in Ginowan, the director also gave a lecture to bureau personnel eligible to vote in the election.

An executive of a construction company in central Okinawa recalled that past bureau directors of the former Defense Agency pressed his company to support pro-central government policy candidates in elections for Nago City mayor and Okinawa Governor.

He told Akahata, “As long as the company operates businesses in Okinawa, orders from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. forces are unavoidable. Some bureau directors forced the company to work to defeat anti-U.S. base candidates, saying, ‘The bureau gives contracts to your company, right?’ If such behavior is allowed to continue, the very basis of democracy will be destroyed.”