The Abe administration continues to give the cold shoulder to Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, who was elected in November pledging to stop the government project to build a new U.S. military facility in the prefecture to relocate the functions of the U.S. Marine's Air Station Futenma. A reported plan to sharply trim spending on measures to spur Okinawa's economy in the fiscal 2015 budget smacks of a blatant attempt to use national government money to keep the new governor in check and sway the local administration policy.
In the November election, Onaga defeated his predecessor Hirokazu Nakaima, who in December 2013 gave the go-ahead for a reclamation work off the coast of Nago to build the Futenma replacement airfield in a turnaround from his earlier campaign promise to seek relocating the Futenma base outside the prefecture.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and top leaders of his administration have since refused dialogue with the new governor. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party did not extend a customary invitation for Onaga to attend the party's meeting last week to discuss the budget to promote Okinawa's economy, and reportedly snubbed a request from the governor to join another LDP meeting on the issue of subsidies to sugar cane producers. That marks a sharp contrast from the close contacts that Abe and other members of his team maintained with Nakaima before and after his decision to approve the reclamation off Nago. Just before he made the decision in 2013, the administration secured ¥346 billion in spending on Okinawa's economy for fiscal 2014 — a 15 percent increase from the previous year that even topped the ¥340 billion sought in budgetary requests earlier in the year. Abe himself promised at least ¥300 billion in such spending through fiscal 2021, and the fiscal 2015 budget request for the Okinawa spending made last summer — just as Nakaima was fighting an uphill battle for re-election — shot up to ¥379.4 billion.