JIP Head Yoshimura Refers to Possible Return to National Politics

Tokyo, Feb. 17 (Jiji Press)–Japan Innovation Party leader Hirofumi Yoshimura, also governor of Osaka Prefecture, has indicated the possibility of considering returning to national politics. Yoshimura told a meeting of JIP executives in the city of Osaka, the capital of the western Japan prefecture, Sunday that he aims to conduct a local referendum on the so-called Osaka metropolis plan for regional administrative reorganization, a signature policy of the JIP, by spring 2027. He went on to say that he would study his possible return to national politics if the metropolis initiative is approved in the referendum, according to informed sources. At the meeting, the JIP, the coalition partner of the country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, decided that Yoshimura would remain JIP leader, without holding a leadership election following the Feb. 8 House of Representatives general election. In the election for the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, the JIP failed to increase its seats markedly. Yoshimura apparently aims to solidify the LDP-JIP ruling coalition through his possible comeback to national politics. Currently, he is not a member of the Diet. The metropolis plan, which calls for scrapping the current city of Osaka and reorganizing it into special wards under Osaka Prefecture, a similar structure to Tokyo’s 23 special wards, was turned down in local referendums twice, in 2015 and 2020. Yoshimura resigned from the post of governor last month in his fresh bid for re-election with a renewed pledge to realize the Osaka metropolis project. He secured re-election as Osaka governor in the poll held Feb. 8, the same date as the Lower House election. “I will put what I have promised into action by the end of my current term (as Osaka governor through April 2027),” Yoshimura told reporters at the Osaka prefectural government office Monday. Yoshimura won a Lower House seat in the December 2014 general election and served as a lawmaker of the chamber until early October 2015, when he resigned to run in an Osaka mayoral election. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]