TOKYO: Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike (pic) is challenging the old-boy network in the capital, where she thrashed a ruling party rival to win her post and now aims to lead reform-minded candidates to victory in a city-wide July election.
A popular former TV announcer who speaks Arabic and English, Koike is the leader of a mega-metropolis with an economy bigger than Holland’s and a budget on par with Sweden’s – and her reformist image has some politicians betting she could become Japan’s first female premier in a few years.
For now, the former defence minister says her sights are set firmly on a July 2 Tokyo metropolitan assembly poll, where she is targeting a majority for her fledgling “Tokyo Citizens First” party and its allies.
Koike, in an interview with Reuters, compared herself to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose election marked a meteoric rise and whose party now needs a majority in June parliamentary elections so he can carry out reforms.
“I am doing the same – trying to increase the new assembly members who aspire to reform,” she said. “Even if a (new) top leader is chosen, reforms will not progress if the legislature does not change.”
Koike, who has made good governance a key policy plank after her two predecessors quit over scandals, has already caused a crack in Abe’s ruling bloc by tying up with the Komeito party, the LDP’s junior national-level partner, for the local poll.
After nearly a year in office, her support ratings are still above 60%, prompting defections from a struggling opposition Democratic Party and from the LDP.
“If her party wins the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election by a landslide, the next goal will surely be national politics,” said Akihisa Nagashima, a lower house MP from Tokyo who recently bolted the main opposition Democratic Party.
Koike brushed such speculation aside.
“I am concentrating on the single matter of what to do for Tokyo,” she said, adding any sign she was eyeing national politics would sap motivation among metropolitan employees.
Topping her long-term priorities is designing a vision for Tokyo after 2025, when its population of about 13.7 million will start shrinking, said Koike, wearing a scarf in her signature colour of green.
Koike has a record of challenging Japan’s male-dominated politics and urged the Kasumigaseki Country Club, the golf venue in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, to admit women as full members.
Like former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, under whom she was environment minister, Koike’s strategy is to paint the local LDP old guard as anti-reform. — Reuters
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