Miscalculation!

His party brings down Ohira

In a comedy of miscalculations that left Japan's politicians in shock, the government of Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira was suddenly toppled last week and forced to call for new elections. The defeat of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party Cabinet came on a no-confidence vote that was introduced by the opposition Socialist Party. The motion leveled serious charges against the government: inaction against corruption in its ranks, recklessly inflationary economic policies, excessive defense spending. Still, it was no more devastating than a number of other opposition attacks. This time, to everyone's astonishment, 70 legislators in Ohira's own party abstained from voting in the Diet. The consequence: the government lost by a vote of 243 to 187.

It was the first time in the 25-year rule of the Liberal Democrats that one of its governments had been brought down by a vote of no confidence. Remarkably enough, no one was more chagrined at the voting than the Socialists themselves. Their motion had been hatched essentially to bolster their position in the campaign for the upper-house election scheduled for late June. The Socialists decided to introduce it to dramatize their opposition, but they were no more anxious for a new general election than the Liberal Democrats. They were confident their motion would be defeated.

The Socialists failed to reckon with anti-Ohira L.D.P. factions, led by former Prime Ministers Takeo Fukuda and Takeo Miki and former Defense Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. The rebels had been demanding that Ohira, 70, step down. Even so, they were not expected to seriously split the party. After the vote, Fukuda insisted that he had warned his faction members against such a move. "It was a big miscalculation," he said. Later, however, he refused to rule out the possibility that he might bolt and form a new conservative party.

Ohira was so angry that he refused comment. The Prime Minister, who took office in December 1978 after defeating Fukuda for the party leadership, had just returned from meetings in Mexico, Canada and with President Carter in Washington. He will remain as caretaker until the elections are held, probably at about the same time as the upper-house balloting next month. But by then he will have had to face an even tougher fight to prove once again that he is the strongest man within his own party.

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