TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th July, 2020) Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko has been re-elected for a second term having won 59.7 percent of the votes in the Sunday election, official results released on Monday show.
A total of 3,661,371 people cast their ballots for Koike Yuriko, who was running against 21 other candidates, including renowned lawyer and former head of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, Kenji Utsunomiya, who got 13.8 percent of the votes.
After her election win, the governor said at a press conference in Tokyo that her current top priority was protection against the coronavirus.
"Under the nationwide state of emergency declaration, we asked almost all businesses in Tokyo to close down. But these days we know more about where and how the virus has been spreading. So we don't plan to ask all businesses to close down again. Instead, we will consider another effective measure to contain the spread of infection," Koike Yuriko said as quoted by the NHK broadcaster on Monday.
She added that holding the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, postponed until next year amid the pandemic, was an important goal that would prove that the coronavirus had been overcome.
After May 5, Tokyo saw a drop in coronavirus cases with fewer than 40 new cases reported daily. However, in the past days, there has been an upward trend in the number of new cases. On Sunday, 111 new COVID-19 cases were registered in Tokyo, while on Saturday, 131 new coronavirus cases were reported in Tokyo, the highest daily figure since May 2. Yuriko Koike urged residents on Saturday to avoid traveling beyond the capital's borders.
Before becoming Tokyo's first female governor after a landslide victory in the election of 2016, Koike served as lawmaker in the Japanese parliament and held two cabinet positions � of environment minister and defense minister � in the governments of Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe, respectively.
