AKITA \u2013 A town assembly in Akita Prefecture\u00a0passed a no-confidence motion on Friday against its mayor, who has been unconscious for months following a brain hemorrhage.<\/p>\n
The passage means that the 72-year-old mayor of Hachirogata, Kikuo Hatakeyama, will automatically lose his position on May 19 under the local autonomy law. A mayoral election to choose his successor is expected to be held within 50 days.<\/p>\n
The motion said that removing Hatakeyama is a tough but necessary choice to prevent town administration from being stalled.<\/p>\n
It is rare in the country for a no-confidence motion to be filed against a mayor due to illness, according to the National Association of Chairpersons of Town and Village Assemblies.<\/p>\n
Hatakeyama has been unconscious since February when he underwent emergency surgery after complaining of ill health while on duty.<\/p>\n
His wife asked the town assembly\u00a0last month to determine his fate at its own discretion, saying that it would be the best option for him to resign as mayor.<\/p>\n
The local autonomy law requires mayors who want to resign to notify the assembly chair of their intention. The town government last month said that a resignation request submitted by family members would be invalid. As a result, the town assembly decided to submit a no-confidence motion as the quickest way for the mayor to quit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AKITA \u2013 A town assembly in Akita Prefecture\u00a0passed a no-confidence motion on Friday against its mayor, who has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9001,3007,8,677,33],"class_list":{"0":"post-19073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-akita","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-japan","11":"tag-local-government","12":"tag-nihon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}