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Major parties defeated
in Japan naval base
1 July 2009: Voters in the Tokyo bay city of Yokosuka have delivered a stunning rebuke to both main parties by rejecting the incumbent mayor in favour of a 33-year old independent. Yuto Yoshida’s victory against the bureaucrat turned mayor was all the more surprising given Ryoichi Kabaya’s support from not only both main political parties but also that of popular former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi.  The result is a particular blow for Koizumi’s son Shinjiro, who hopes to replace his father as the city’s representative in the national parliament.
 
Yoshida, a two-term city assembly member, defeated mayor Kabaya and Masahiko Goto (backed by the Social Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party) on a 45 per cent turnout, up five per cent on the last mayoral election. Yoshida is already drawing comparisons to Yokohama mayor Hiroshi Nakada, who also defeated an ageing incumbent former bureaucrat backed by the LDP, and Osaka’s combative governor Toru Hashimoto, who has also embodied the recent public trend against Japan’s ailing political system of faction-ridden parties and wasteful bureaucracy. 
 
The city is notable for the presence of the largest US naval base in the Pacific.  The new mayor ran on a campaign of demanding more information from the US about its stationing of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington at the Yokosuka Naval Base.

Shenzhen’s mayor
under house arrest
Hong Kong, 8 June 2009: Several Chinese newspapers reported today that Shenzhen mayor Xu Zhongheng and his wife were place under house arrest as part of an investigation into alleged economic crimes. According to a number of reports, Xu, who became mayor in 2005, was allegedly involved in the multimillion- dollar scandal involving Gome electrical appliances group founder Wong Kwong- yu, who is suspected of manipulating share prices.

During the past year, Mayor Xu has also been criticised for poor government and for blaming junior officials for a nightclub fire last November in which 44 people were killed.

Prior to the investigation, Xu has enjoyed a reputation as a hard-working and outspoken mayor. He was born to a peasant family and promised ‘clean’ government when appointed mayor. Under his administration Shenzhen and Hong Kong agreed to cooperate economically and share technology.

Pakistani cities
on terrorist alert
Islamabad, 31 May 2009: The Pakistani government has put the country's major cities on high alert after this week's deadly terrorist attacks in Lahore and Peshawar. Getting in and around Pakistan's major cities has become much more difficult ever since Wednesday's suicide car bombing in Lahore that killed around 30 people and Thursday's twin blasts at a popular market in Peshawar that killed at least 14 people.

All traffic in and out of the capital, Islamabad, has been slowed as police conduct security checks. Additional barricades have been erected around high value targets, such as government buildings and the city's diplomatic enclave. On Saturday, police said they rounded up about 70 suspects in make-shift dwellings on the outskirts of the capital and neighbouring Rawalpindi. In Peshawar, all public gatherings have been banned. Security has also been tightened in Lahore and Multan.

A senior Taliban commander Hakimullah Mesud claimed responsibility for the Lahore attack, saying it was revenge for the military offensive against Taliban militants in northwestern Swat Valley and surrounding areas. And he warned Pakistanis to expect more. The commander is a top associate of Taliban leader Baitullah Mesud, believed to have masterminded the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. (Report by Catherine Maddux, VoA News)

Tamils to exchange
guns for ballot box
Colombo, 27 May 2009: Sri Lanka says it will hold elections in northern areas that were caught up in the devastating war between the military and Tamil rebels. Government officials announced this week that local council elections will be held in early August. They will be the first elections in the area in more than a decade. Parts of the region were held by the rebels before they admitted defeat last week in their quarter-century-long war.

The rebels' chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, announced that the group has given up violence, and will pursue independence through peaceful means. He told the BBC the rebels have agreed to enter a democratic process to achieve the rights for the self-determination of the Tamil people.

The rebel spokesman acknowledged for the first time that the Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, died last week during the final battles against government forces.

The United Nations estimates that more than 7,000 civilians were killed during the final months of the war. About 300,000 people have been displaced. The rebels began their fight for a separate homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority in 1983. The UN estimates that the civil war resulted in up to 100,000 deaths. (Report by VoA News)

Greater Auckland must
rethink voting system
Auckland, 5 May 2009: A local government specialist says the powerful role given to the first Mayor of Greater Auckland, New Zealand, means there is a need to rethink the current electoral system. Dr Asquith, a senior lecturer at Massey University, has raised concerns about the first past the post electoral system, which produces winners who may be supported by quite small minorities of voters.

He says unlike those who currently wear mayoral chains, the Auckland mayor will have real executive power and a new voting system should acknowledge that. Dr Asquith supports the single transferable vote system (STV) - where voters rank candidates with a number in order of preference - and is keen for a public education programme about the merits of this system, which is seen as more complex. In New Zealand, eight councils use STV out of 73.

“We need to ensure that the person elected as Auckland mayor has indeed the support of the voting populace,” he says. “Under the present system in New Zealand, we have a system of weak mayors. Our mayors are, in fact, powerless...other than some have a casting vote in council if a vote is tied. All a mayor can do is to persuade, cajole or plead with their council to act according to the mayor’s agenda.”

"STV provides a much fairer result, whereby all votes are considered,” says Dr Asquith. “Given the importance of the position of Mayor of Greater Auckland, isn’t it time that we persevered with STV and engaged in a mass public education programme to ensure that all voters understand both the importance of, and need for, an electoral system which delivers a mayor for Auckland who is empowered not only by statute, but by the people as well.”

Japan opposition party
wins key mayoral race
Tokyo, 2 May 2009: A former legislator has cruised to victory in a key Japanese mayoral election. Takashi Kawamura of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) polled 514,514 votes compared to his nearest rival for the post of mayor of Nagoya, Masahiko Hosokawa, backed by the country’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), who received 282,990 votes. Voter turnout stood at 50.5 per cent, a marked increase on the 27.5 per cent in the previous mayoral election held in Japan‘s fourth largest metropolis and motor manufacturing hub.

Other candidates included Yoshiro Ota, a businessman backed by the recently revived Japanese Communist Party and Katsuaki Kuroda, an independent. Kawamura first entered politics in 1993 as a member of the House of Representatives as part of Morihiro Hosokawa’s Japan New Party, the year Hosokawa served as Japan’s first and only non-LDP Prime Minister since 1955.

While the DPJ could be ordinarily expected to win in its urban hinterland, Kawamura’s victory will pile on the pressure against embattled Japanese prime minister Taro Aso. Few predicted anything other than a Kawamura victory in Nagoya, but the national political climate is also unfavourable to scandal-prone DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa.

Hong Kong remains
China’s leading city
Hong Kong, 24 April 2009: Hong Kong has retained its top slot as China’s most competitive city, according to an annual survey.  The Blue Book on Urban Competitiveness ranked the special administrative region ahead of Shenzen and Shanghai, which remain in second and third place.  The newest entrant to the top 10 was 2008 Olympic sailing events venue Qingdao.  The survey’s compilers, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Chinese cities were under-performing globally however.

The top 10 competitive cities in China in order are: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Suzhou and Kaohsiung in Taiwan.  “Urbanization will become the major force behind China's economic growth in the next 30 years,” Yao Jingyuan, chief economist with the National Bureau of Statistics, told reporters.  The academy noted that on the Global Urban Competitiveness Report, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai ranked 26th, 64th and 41st respectively.

Japan’s public opinion polarised
about deportation of teenage girl
Tokyo, 15 April 2009: The enforcement of a long-running deportation saga in Japan has led to widespread condemnation and protests on the streets of a Tokyo commuter town. The decision to deport the Calderon family, originally from the Philippines, has polarised public opinion, not least over the fate of their Japanese-born teenage daughter. The family received the backing of the Warabi city council in March, which urged the country’s justice ministry not to proceed with the deportation. However, bureaucrats refused to recognise either the council or the public anger at the move and deported the parents on 13 April.
 
The Calderons allegedly entered Japan on false passports in the 1990s but gave birth to their daughter Noriko in 1995. Following Sarah Calderon’s arrest in 2006, the deportation saga began, though many consider Noriko to be Japanese, having been raised and schooled in Japan. Noriko will now remain in Japan under the guardianship of relatives on a one-year special residency visa, as her family were forced to choose between this or her deportation alongside them. Critics of the move argue that as she can only speak Japanese then any move to deport her to the Philippines would be a breach of her human rights. As well as widespread public sympathy, the ministry’s actions attracted the condemnation of Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council.
 
Warabi, in Saitama prefecture, is one of only nine municipalities in Japan to be led by a Communist mayor, following a spectacular election defeat in 2007 over the issue of unchecked urban sprawl in the Tokyo commuter town. The Calderon case has become something of a cause celebre for both left and right in the emotive national debate over immigration, with nationalists descending on the city to protest at the decision to allow Noriko to remain in the country.
 
Riot police separated the opposing sides during a noisy nationalist-led protest past the teenager’s high school last weekend, with vans displaying anti-Filipino slogans, the organisers of which vowed to return every month until she was deported. While nationalist groups see the Calderon case as a defining point in retaining Japan’s strict immigration system, many local residents resent the rightists’ presence as painting a negative image to the outside world.

New Zealand government makes
big changes to Auckland scheme
Auckland, 8 April 2009: New Zealand’s government has agreed to make Auckland a metropolitan area of 1.4 million people, headed by a powerful elected mayor. However it rejected recommendations by a royal commission for a second tier of six elected local councils. Instead the government has decided on 30 community boards, which will have more powers than the present community boards but will not be allowed to raise revenue or hire staff.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key said it was a simple and efficient system, which should be in place by October 2010. He told the press that the new system struck a balance between strategic thinking for the region and a local voice.

Auckland’s present seven mayors, who met the prime minister before he made the government’s decision public, said John Key had destroyed the work of the commission. “The government took seven days to castrate recommendations based on 18 months of research and deliberations.” Waitakere City Mayor Bob Harvey said the changes concentrate too much power in the hands of too few and it was not certain there would be communication between the super-council and the community boards.

Mayor Harvey, who spoke for the Auckland mayors, added one hundred year of local government, damn good local government, had almost gone. "This is a big deal and Aucklanders are smart people. They better start realising right now that unless they have a say in the next week, they will lose out enormously on the future,” he warned.

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance spent more than a year considering how the region's 1.4 million residents could be better served by their councils. Its 800-page report, published at the end of March, recommended that the current eight councils be dissolved and replaced with an overseeing body called Auckland Council, to be led by one mayor. The council would hold all current council assets and employ all staff. At present, councils employ more than 6,000 workers.

China’s most polluted
city seeks new mayor
Linfen, 3 April 2009: Linfen, China's most polluted city and notorious for deadly mining accidents is having trouble finding willing candidates for mayor and Communist Party chief, the China Daily reported. According to the paper, the two jobs have been vacant since last September, when their former occupants were sacked over a mining disaster that killed 270 people. The paper quoted political experts as saying the posts were probably unattractive to aspiring politicians due to a history of their previous occupants being fired following big mining accidents.

The September accident lead to the dismissal of city's major, Liu Zhijie, and the resignation of provincial governor, Meng Xuenong. The local communist party boss was also fired. According to the China Daily Linfen had seen four mayors in the last three years as China’s government, embarrassed by recurring mining disasters throughout the country, sought to hold local officials accountable for such accidents. (Source: China Daily and others)

New Zealand plans biggest
single city in Australasia
Auckland, 3 April 2009: A royal commission in New Zealand has proposed a radical plan for the country’s largest city Auckland. It wants all councils in the metropolitan region scrapped and replaced by one Greater Auckland parliament with one powerful elected mayor. With a population of some 1.4 people, the ‘new’ city would be the single biggest metropolis in Australasia. At the moment, the area is governed by the Auckland Regional Council and seven territorial councils.

The commission's recommendations went further than many had expected. The existing councils would be abolished and replaced by a single super council, there would also be six elected local councils. Local councils would not have but acting instead as advocates for residents. Auckland’s district mayor, John Banks, said: “I don’t have a city any longer.”

David Shand from the royal commission said, the new Auckland council would comprise a powerful mayor and 23 councillors - 10 elected by all Aucklanders, 10 from the six local councils and three Maori councillors.  "Decisions are not being made properly in Auckland. The city is not as attractive as it could be. It's not performing as economically as it could be. Decision-making powers are being far too fragmented. It all means it's not as good as it could be," he explained. The creation of a metropolis would also lead to a position of mayor of Greater Auckland.

Peter Salmon, commission chairman said he hoped the new post would attract the best people in Auckland. Among the front runners for the job is John Banks, one of Auckland’s seven current district mayors.

Auckland's new super mayor would have some impressive powers. He or she would appoint a deputy mayor and chairpersons of each council committee. They have the power to propose the budget, and the power to initiate and formulate major policy for the council.

If the proposals are approved by the government, and it is a great if, Greater Auckland should become a reality by the end of 2010. New Zealand’s local government minister Rodney Hide has already said that chunks of the commission’s report were not crisp and simple. He also hinted at changes to the super city model.

Karachi mayor deplores
extremism and terrorism
Houston, 11 March 2009: The port cities of Karachi (Pakistan) and Houston (USA) have become sister cities (twin cities) after their respective city leaders Nazim Mustafa Kamal and Mayor Bill White have signed an agreement. The ceremony took place at Houston City Hall. Karachi is Houston’s 17th sister city.

Karachi Nazim (mayor) Kamal said that his city was the largest Muslim city in the world and face of Pakistan. He also expressed his sorrow that following the recent attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, the true liberal picture of Pakistan had been tainted. “Events, which we deplore, have killed the country’s marketing efforts all over the world,” he added.

In his speech in Houston, Kamal said that he hoped that through the sister city agreement Pakistanis can show the US and the world that they opposed to all forms of extremism and terrorism. “It is very important for Karachi to take a lead so that it can tell the world who we are, what we do, what we think and what have we contributed to humanity,” he stressed.