Japan Ruling Party Slips in Voting : Fails to Regain 2 Governorships, Dips in Local Assemblies

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost bids to regain control of governorships in two major prefectures (states) but retained all 11 other governors’ posts that were up for election Sunday, returns showed today.

In local elections widely regarded as a national referendum on both Nakasone’s leadership and his controversial plan to enact a 5% value-added sales tax, voters failed to deliver a clear-cut verdict. Although upholding the pre-election position in all 13 gubernatorial races, voters trimmed Liberal Democrats’ holdings by 6.9% in the 44 prefectural assemblies for which elections were held.

Citing the assembly setbacks, Nakasone said he viewed the results “solemnly.” But he insisted that what is most important for Japan at this time is to enact the fiscal 1987 budget quickly and carry out measures to stop the appreciation of the yen. He said his sales tax proposal should be debated at length in Parliament.

Party Chief Disappointed

Noboru Takeshita, secretary general of the ruling party, expressed disappointment in the conservatives’ failure to win the governor’s seat in Fukuoka, where victory had been thought a strong possibility. He also said the party would have to consider the widespread opposition its own candidates had expressed to the sales tax in campaigning for the elections.

Amid reports that the results would force Nakasone to withdraw his sales tax proposal, Takeshita said a decision as to whether the proposal should be amended, withdrawn, or shelved for debate until the next session of Parliament should be made after opposition parties agree to resume debate in Parliament.

Opposition parties have boycotted deliberations on the government’s fiscal 1987 budget since early February to protest the sales tax proposal, snarling government attempts to draw up details of a new economic policy to promote growth at home and soothe trade frictions with the United States.

Because of the budget impasse, the government has been operating since April 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, under a 50-day provisional budget.

Voters Sunday dashed the ruling party’s hopes of regaining control of governors’ posts that it lost four years ago in Fukuoka, the most populous prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu, and in Hokkaido, the northernmost island-prefecture. The party succeeded, however, in beating down bids by leftist-backed candidates to capture the governorships of Shimane and Iwate prefectures.

Gov. Hachiji Okuda, the leftist-backed incumbent in Fukuoka, won reelection by only a narrow margin, but Gov. Takahiro Yokomichi of Hokkaido swamped his conservative opponent. In the last elections in 1983, Okuda broke 16 years of Liberal Democratic rule in Fukuoka while Yokomichi ended 24 years of the party’s control of Hokkaido’s governorship.

Akira Matsuura, the conservatives’ loser in Hokkaido, expressed astonishment at his failure to win support even in rural sections of the island, where the leftist-backed Yokomichi won about 70% of the votes.

Incumbents Reelected

Liberal Democratic-supported incumbents in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kanagawa prefectures, all of whom had support from opposition parties, were declared reelected in vote counting early today.

Although the results reaffirmed conservatives’ dominance around the country, the election campaign exposed the dimensions of widespread opposition to Nakasone’s proposal to enact a sales tax.

All opposition candidates campaigned against the tax, and not a single conservative spoke out in favor of it. Opinion polls have shown that such a tax is opposed by more than 80% of the public.

Nakasone himself, who was accused of breaking a promise made during last summer’s general election campaign not to press for a large-scale indirect tax, was forced to forgo campaigning entirely lest he injure conservative candidates’ chances.

It was the first time that a Japanese prime minister has stayed out of a nationwide campaign for local offices.

In Iwate prefecture, where voters stunned the nation in a by-election for the upper house March 8 by electing a Socialist who campaigned on the single issue of opposition to the sales tax, incumbent conservative Gov. Tadashi Nakamura won handily.

Although the opposition had been given a chance for another upset in Iwate, Nakamura won by a margin of 177,253 votes. The ruling party’s candidate in the upper house by-election had lost by a margin of 223,569 ballots.

Like most other conservatives, however, Nakamura defied party headquarters to speak out against “forceful enactment” of the value-added sales tax. After his victory, he declared that conservatives’ opposition to the tax “is bound to have an influence” on the Liberal Democrats’ handling of the issue in Parliament.

The conservatives’ margin of victory in Shimane prefecture, where a leftist-backed candidate had been given a chance of pulling off another upset, was slashed dramatically. Four years ago, the winner polled 416,000 votes, but this time its victor got only slightly more than 250,000 votes.