TOKYO, Nov. 20, 2024—What Trump did in his sweeping presidential victory had reverberated to a local Japanese gubernatorial race in helping the disposed governor win back the seat thanks to explosions of fake and defamatory social media postings against his rival candidate who was leading the election with a comfortable opinion poll margin until shortly before the voting.
Motohiko Saito, 46, the former Hyogo prefecture governor resigned in September for his power harassment acts against prefecture officers and accepting grafts from businesses. In the Nov. 17 election to choose a new governor, Saito won by a wide margin as an independent to Kazumi Inamura.
Saito told reporters after the results were out that his victory ‘enormously’ owned to social media. It was an about-face to what Hyogo voters had felt about Saito when his power harassment and graft accepting news surfaced: anger, frustration, disbelief. Santo’s acts led to the death of two prefecture officials.
Inamura’s supporting group’s X account was frozen twice, first on Nov. 6 and then on Nov. 12 even though the sight contained no postings that infringed on X rules, according to Japanese news reports. It was around that time when Saito’s campaign office began social media postings aggressively, some saying that Inamura had supported giving voting rights to non-resident foreign nations and labeling her as ‘traitor of Japan’ and other derogatory language, according to media reports.
On Nov. 18, a prefecture assembly member abruptly tendered his resignation, and reporters that interviewed the member said he was asked by his family to quick because of threats from pro-Saito people, including Takashi Tachibana, who heads an errant self-claimed political party called the party to protect citizens from NHK.
Some news reports said Tachibana visited Inamura’s private house aboard a truck equipped with loud speakers, threatening Inamura to step down.
The head of the prefecture’s special committee investigating Saito recently quit. The committee is scheduled to continue its hearings of Saito and others but it’s obvious that it cannot be tough against the reelected governor – just like Jack Smith’s committee investigating Trust as well as numerous other American entities are taking a long pause in their investigations.
Trump tactics work and Saito borrowed it.
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