Japan’s Ruling Party About to Lose Its Majority

For the first time in its 38-year history, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party will become a minority party today.

Thirty-five rebels in a faction led by former Finance Minister Tsutomu Hata and Ichiro Ozawa, former secretary general, have announced they will resign this afternoon as a step toward establishing their own opposition party Wednesday.

The move will leave Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s party with only 229 seats, or 27 shy of a majority, in the lower house, which chooses the prime minister. Four years ago, the party lost its majority in the upper house for the first time.

Hata said his new party, which already has lined up 46 candidates, will seek to run a total of 100 to deny the Liberal Democrats a majority in an election July 18. Failure to win a majority would force the Liberal Democrats to seek cooperation in putting together a Cabinet.

And if the combined forces of the opposition win, leaders of the largest opposition party, the Socialists, indicated that they might support Hata as prime minister.

Accusing Miyazawa of breaking his repeated promises to carry out political reform, 11 other Liberal Democrats resigned from the party Friday. Ten of them established their own party Monday, which they dubbed “New Party Sakigake.” Sakigake means “herald” or “harbinger.”

The Hata-Ozawa group, which forced Miyazawa to call the snap election Friday by voting with the opposition to pass a motion of no-confidence in the prime minister, will be the third conservative group running against the Liberal Democrats. Last year, a former Liberal Democrat governor, Morihiro Hosokawa, established the Japan New Party, which plans to run at least 60 candidates against his old party. It already has lined up 52 candidates.

The Hata-Ozawa group’s new party will become the ninth player in a “baseball team” of opposition parties and groups. Such splintering of the opposition, which began in 1960, has been one of the major props sustaining the Liberal Democrats’ 38-year control of the government.

Although voters in the past have always raced back into the fold of the conservatives whenever they were in trouble, the Liberal Democrats have never before gone into an election so far below a majority and facing so many conservative opponents.

Minoru Morita, a noted political analyst, said Liberal Democrats would win only 40% of the seats, or about 200.

Kenneth S. Courtis, strategist and senior economist for Deutsche Bank Capital Markets in Asia, was even blunter.

“The once-powerful Liberal Democratic Party is shattered,” he declared in a newsletter.

A landslide defeat such as Morita predicts could open the door to an opposition-led coalition government, a phenomenon that Japan has not experienced since 1948. Not once since the end of World War II has Japan had a government in which the Liberal Democrats or their predecessors did not participate.

Agreement to maintain the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is expected to be a prerequisite for any opposition-led government. But major changes are likely in domestic and economic policy if a conservative-led opposition coalition takes office.

Ozawa, who is Hata’s chief policy brain, for example, has argued for reform of the election system, government deregulation of industry, transfer of administrative powers from the central government to regional administrations and a sweeping opening of Japan’s markets. He also has advocated that Japan make more “international contributions,” including both increases in foreign aid and the use overseas of Japanese troops in U.N. peacekeeping efforts.

Hirotaka Akamatsu, Socialist secretary general, said in a television debate that his party, the largest opposition group, would “not rule out” supporting Hata as prime minister if the Liberal Democrats lost. Previously, Socialists had condemned both Hata and Ozawa as proteges of Shin Kanemaru, the former ruling party kingpin whose arrest for tax evasion in March brought public rage over corruption to a boiling point.

Akira Yamagishi, chairman of Rengo (the Japan Trade Union Confederation), which has never before supported conservatives, said labor unions will help Hata-Ozawa party candidates in the campaign with both staffing and money.

Gaishi Hiraiwa, chairman of Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations), however, declared that big business will stick with the Liberal Democrats.