EDITORIAL: Tokyo failing test of democracy as Henoko landfill work hits 1 year

The U.S. military base project in Okinawa Prefecture is another showcase for the same old proclivity of the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Should there be dissent, administration officials rely on the force of strength to contain it. They keep key information stashed away and engage in endless prevarications and strained insistence until their opponents become exhausted.

One year has passed since earth and sand were first dumped into the waters off the Henoko coast of Nago on Dec. 14, 2018, as part of the project to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, also in the southern prefecture.

Okinawans have shown on a string of occasions--the governor’s race in September last year, the prefecture-wide referendum in February this year, the Lower House by-election in April and the Upper House election in July--that they are opposed to the relocation to Henoko.

The Abe administration, however, has consistently turned a deaf ear.

At other times, Abe has taken pride in his “straight victories” in national elections to emphasize the legitimacy of his own administration and taunt opposition parties. When it comes to Okinawa, however, he seems to believe the public will expressed by voters is something to be disregarded.

That is the grossest example of a double standard.

A succession of other acts also make us suspect we are not living in a democratic state.

The Okinawa prefectural government has taken as many as 33 administrative guidance measures since 2015 on the grounds of possible environmental destruction and violations of agreements. The count only includes those based on laws and regulations that apply to land reclamation.

Earlier this month, for example, the prefectural government called for the removal of an anchor for a float, which it says has damaged coral, and demanded a halt to the work, but the central government has not taken the least notice of it.

Such a reaction would be unthinkable in private-sector projects.

In the meantime, government officials argued, in a lawsuit over the suitability of the prefecture’s revocation of an earlier approval of land reclamation, that the central government is no different from ordinary businesses and individual business owners, and called for protection of its “right” to reclaim land.

That argument was endorsed by the court, which failed to see the essence of the matter and dabbled in superficial legal interpretations, siding with the central government in pressuring Okinawa.

No other development could be more deplorable.

The central government learned, during a study conducted between 2014 and 2016, that a swath of soft seabed lies beneath the planned reclamation area, a finding that it did not release to the public. It officially acknowledged the problem only after dirt had been deposited into the ocean and said it will handle the matter by driving nearly 80,000 piles into the seafloor.

The central government is set to apply to the Okinawa prefectural government soon for approval of a design change, under the recommendation to be given by a panel of experts of its own choosing. In case of nonapproval, government officials plan to take the matter to court to push the plan through, if necessary.

The central government has not even presented an outlook for the cost it would take to build the whole shebang.

It is all too natural that Okinawans are growing increasingly distrustful of such an attitude. Things have gone so awry that some suspect the central government is supportive of having Okinawa’s burnt-down Shuri-jo castle restored because it hopes doing so will help draw a concession from the Okinawa prefectural government on the Henoko issue.

The relocation of Air Station Futenma was initially conceived to reduce the burden of U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture. The reclamation of land off Henoko, however, has turned into an end in itself, and talks are barely making any headway on resolving the problems facing Futenma at this very moment, such as the excruciating noise and the fear of possible plane crashes.

It would take more than 10 years, even under the current plan, for the relocation work to be completed. The central government’s efforts should be directed toward a settlement of the real “Futenma issue.”

Tokyo should face up to Okinawa’s voices.

We make this call once again on the first anniversary of that horrifying day, when public opinion was dumped into the waters along with soil and sand.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 15