Japan Press Weekly

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2010 April 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

Progressive great fight in Kyoto gubernatorial election

The number of votes cast for Mon Yusuke of the Association for a Democratic Kyoto Government in which the Japanese Communist Party also participated was 307,826 (36.74% of all votes) which was 38,086, or 2.36 percentage points more than the number of votes that the association’s candidate received in the previous election four years ago.

His rival Yamada Keiji obtained 529,927 votes, but this was a decrease of more than 2 percentage points from the previous election.

Asked by reporters about the Kyoto gubernatorial election result, JCP Secretarial Head Ichida Tadayoshi on April 12 made the following comment:

“In Kyoto, the DPJ, LDP, and Komei parties formed the “all-are-ruling parties” bloc in the prefectural assembly. Kyoto is ranked the second-worst in Japan in terms of the rate of decline in the number of businesses. Kyoto residents are experiencing hardships. During the election campaign, Mon promised to guarantee equal opportunity to receive welfare and medical services for all people and to help rebuild people’s livelihoods. His promise received a favorable response from a wide range of people.”

“All political parties, except for the JCP, came under severe criticism from voters. The vote cast that Mon scored was 1.57 times more than the vote cast for the JCP in the 2009 House of Representatives proportional representation election. In contrast, the vote cast for Yamada was only 47% of the total number of vote that the DPJ, LDP, Komei, and the Social Democratic Party obtained in the 2009 general election.
- Akahata, April 13, 2010