Opposition Election Victory Deals Blow to Miyazawa

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa suffered another blow to his sagging political fortunes Sunday when a candidate backed by an alliance of opposition parties won a narrow victory over a Liberal Democrat in a by-election for the upper house of Parliament.

Making an eleventh-hour appeal in the conservative rice-bowl stronghold of Miyagi prefecture (state), Miyazawa on Saturday had called the contest “an extremely important election--extremely important to me too.”

But after a campaign that focused on corruption in Tokyo and opposition to opening Japan’s rice market, voters handed Koki Hagino, 51, dean of Tohoku Welfare University’s graduate school, a narrow, 2,917-vote victory over the ruling party’s Nobuo Onodera, 66, a former prefectural assembly speaker. Hagino was backed by Socialists, Democratic Socialists, two splinter opposition groups and Rengo (the Japan Trade Union Confederation).

Hagino won 396,532 votes to Onodera’s 393,615 and did not move into the lead until 99% of the ballots had been counted. A Communist won 67,378 votes. Turnout was 52.4%.

Opposition leaders declared in Tokyo that the result showed that voters no longer support either Miyazawa or the Liberal Democrats.

Tamisuke Watanuki, secretary general of the ruling party, pledged to redouble his party’s efforts to carry out political reforms.

It was the second straight defeat for the conservatives in a by-election for the upper house. On Feb. 9, a Liberal Democrat lost by a 14% margin to an opposition alliance candidate in Nara prefecture, another conservative fortress. Since 1945, the Liberal Democrats have lost in Miyagi only three times, including last time around in 1989 when a Socialist won an upset victory. The death of that winner precipitated Sunday’s by-election.

A nationwide election for half of the seats in the upper house, where the Liberal Democrats in 1989 lost their overall majority for the first time, will be held in July.

The victories of the opposition alliance promised to add impetus to moves to field joint opposition candidates against the Liberal Democrats in the July election. So far, Rengo has secured opposition agreement to field seven joint candidates in 26 single-seat constituencies and hopes to raise that number to at least 20.

Miyazawa tried to put the best face on the outcome by calling the Miyagi election “a marvelous battle that will inevitably provide a driving force for the next victory.” In fact, it offered little comfort for the prime minister, who has yet to score a political victory of any kind since taking office Nov. 2.

Miyazawa’s party had mobilized 170 members of Parliament to campaign for Onodera against Hagino. The latter, unlike the opposition alliance’s Nara winner who had served 20 years in the lower house of Parliament, entered the race as a political unknown.

Also, a strong showing by Hagino in rural areas of the prefecture was interpreted as a display of mistrust of assurances from Miyazawa, his agricultural minister and Onodera that Japan would keep its rice market closed to imports.

Miyazawa defied both his close aides and Onodera’s campaigners, who advised him to stay out of the campaign. “We told party headquarters that it wouldn’t help the campaign to have the prime minister make an appearance,” Onodera’s campaign manager, Takayoshi Kono, told reporters Saturday.

In public opinion polls, Miyazawa’s support rating has fallen as low as 22%.

Initially, the 72-year-old prime minister, an acknowledged policy expert, had been expected to provide the kind of politically strong, authoritative leadership that had been lacking under his predecessor, Toshiki Kaifu. But dogged by an old scandal that had forced him to resign as finance minister in 1988 and distracted by two newly emerging scandals, Miyazawa has been unable to get Parliament moving or to adopt measures to prop up a sagging economy.

Tokyo’s stock market remains depressed. No progress has been made on a bill that the upper house failed to pass last December to send Japan’s armed forces overseas to assist in disaster relief and U.N. peacekeeping activities.

Relations with the United States, effectively Japan’s only ally, have soured, in part because of a comment Miyazawa made denigrating the American “work ethic.” And now, because of an opposition boycott that lasted most of February, the 1992 budget won’t be enacted in time for the start of the fiscal year April 1.