Voting for Stability

JAPAN

The ruling Liberal Democrats slide back to victory

After 25 years in power, Japan's right-of-center Liberal Democratic Party appeared ready for the taking. Its leader, Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira, 70, had died of a heart attack only ten days before the elections. The party, moreover, had been declining in popularity. There had been widespread disenchantment with its ceaseless factional disputes and with the kind of corruption that led to the 1976 indictment of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in the Lockheed bribery scandal. Opposition leaders talked confidently of winning enough seats to force the Liberal Democrats into a coalition government.

It was not to be. Last week, in the largest electoral turnout in 22 years (75% of the 81 million voters eligible), the Liberal Democrats were returned to office with their biggest margin of victory since 1969. The party won 284 of the 511 seats in the National Diet's powerful House of Representatives (lower house), a gain of 36; promised support from independents will raise its strength to 288. In the 252-member upper House of Councilors, which basically reviews decisions of the lower house, the Liberal Democrats increased their seats from 124 to 135.

Ohira had been forced to call elections in May after losing a confidence motion in the lower house that even its opposition sponsors had not expected to win. The campaign took place in an atmosphere of growing crisis. Voters were worried not only by energy (Japan, which supported U.S. sanctions against Iran, once got 11% of its oil from that country) but also by Moscow's invasion of Afghanistan and its military buildup on the Soviet-occupied Kurile Islands, which are only 65 miles from the northeastern coast of Hokkaido. Faced with these uncertainties, the voters clearly decided that this was not the time for a potentially unworkable coalition of parties with irreconcilable policies. Some voters apparently supported the Liberal Democrats out of sympathy for Ohira's death. Concluded Kunihiko Takano, a respected economic commentator: "The people may not like the tendency to corruption of a long-entrenched political party, but at least it is stable, familiar and predictable."

Unfortunately, one predictable aspect of the Liberal Democratic Party is fractious infighting. Although Ohira's death unified the party's dissident factions for the elections--appealing for unity, some candidates played Ohira's last campaign speech over loudspeakers in the streets --the quarrels will surface again as the party picks its new leader. A chairman must be chosen before the new Diet meets on July 17 for a special session.

One leading candidate to succeed Ohira is former Trade Minister Toshio Komoto, 69, a sharp, urbane industrialist who made a fortune in shipping and who has support from the business sector. Komoto, however, is an unknown quantity as party leader and is opposed by Tanaka's faction for having supported an investigation of the former Prime Minister's links to the Lockheed scandal (Tanaka resigned before being indicted for taking a $2 million bribe). Another candidate, Yasuhiro Nakasone, 62, has served as secretary general of the party and in various Cabinet posts, including that of Defense Minister. Some of his colleagues regard him as an untrustworthy opportunist because he has been known to switch allegiances within party factions. The third prospect, former Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, 60, is respected as an intellectual but considered by some as too much of a gentleman to be able to control the factions.

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