OSAKA -- Earlier this week, ahead of today's start of the official campaign period for the Osaka gubernatorial election, Gov. "Knock" Yokoyama announced a 22-point bundle of campaign promises, pledging to make the prefectural government "bright."

But except for his pledge to continue to pursue a 10-year streamlining plan the prefecture announced in September, none of his campaign promises for the April 11 election appear concrete. Neither are they new.

"Considering the difficult financial situation, I cannot promise many concrete plans ... I would like to be flexible as the economic climate changes," Yokoyama said.

He was vague on the controversial plan to raise entrance fees for local public high schools, a plan rejected by every party in the prefectural assembly in December. He said there may or may not be an increase, depending on the outcome of discussions with assembly members. "With the help of Osaka residents and parents, (I) will try to improve the educational environment," Yokoyama pledged.

He said he would ask students' parents to bear the cost of education in general, which is in line with the restructuring plan.

Yokoyama said he has become "more realistic" after four years in office, and therefore all the vows he made this time are realistic ones.

Soon after he took office in 1995, Yokoyama was forced to back off from his campaign promise that local taxpayer money would not be spent on the Kansai International Airport expansion project. He called his opponent Makoto Ajisaka's stated objectives "unrealistic."

Ajisaka, a former philosophy professor backed by the Japanese Communist Party's Osaka chapter, has promised to restore free medical care for the elderly and to stop the second phase of construction at the airport. Other political parties, including the Liberal Democratic Party, have neither fielded candidates nor supported independents.

Yokoyama refused support from political parties, insisting on being an independent "because I have been doing so with such a belief since my days in the Upper House, and I can carry out drastic policies without any strings," he said.