Voters May Spurn Japan’s Socialists : Election: Poor showing by No. 2 party is foreseen. This would dim hopes for opposition-led coalition to replace Liberal Democrats.

In this capital city of Tokyo’s neighboring prefecture (state), a campaign debacle that could help Japan’s beleaguered ruling Liberal Democrats was played out for all to see Wednesday.

Four days before a crucial election for the lower house of Parliament, Hirotaka Akamatsu, 45, secretary general of Japan’s No. 1 opposition party, the Socialists, gave a street speech for the party’s only candidate in the first district of Chiba, with 1,457,781 voters.

Twenty people listened. Four female “cheerleaders,” dressed in Girl Scout-like uniforms, waved white-gloved hands to passersby. Nobody waved back. And after Akamatsu finished, eight people applauded--two fewer than the number of special police guarding the Socialists’ No. 2 executive.

As if to confirm the fiasco as a harbinger of what lies ahead, five Tokyo newspapers published predictions Wednesday of a stunning Socialist collapse--and a surprisingly strong Liberal Democrat showing.

The Liberal Democrats, who have ruled Japan for the past 38 years, are still expected to lose control of the lower house of Parliament, which elects the prime minister, the newspapers said. But their setback is now expected to be a relatively mild one--thanks largely to the Socialists.

After “unaffiliated” winners join the ruling party, the Liberal Democrats will wind up with about 240 representatives, or 16 short of a majority, the Asahi newspaper predicted. That total could be enough to form a Liberal Democrat-led coalition with help only from the middle-of-the-road Democratic Socialist Party.

All five newspapers predicted that Socialist holdings would be cut by about half of the 140 seats they won in the last election and fall below their historic low of 85 (16.6% of the total) in 1986. Such an outcome would doom hopes for an opposition-led coalition.

The predictions took on life in Chiba.

Both Akamatsu and a campaign manager for the Chiba-1 candidate admitted that the current political winds are blowing against the onetime Marxist party that has long been the only alternative to the Liberal Democrats. This time, three new conservative opposition parties threaten to destroy the Socialists’ monopoly on protest votes.

“Voters may be disgusted with Liberal Democrat corruption, but they feel a sense of hopelessness toward us Socialists,” said Shigeo Wakamatsu, the campaign manager for Hiroharu Yoshimine, the Chiba-1 candidate.

“We are being criticized severely for allowing the corruption,” Akamatsu admitted to reporters who watched him stumping through the city. He also acknowledged that “there are still some voters who doubt that the Socialists can run the government.”

To voters, Akamatsu pleaded for at least 100 Socialist victories--or 40 fewer than in the last election in 1990. Without 100 Socialists, he warned, an opposition coalition cannot be formed.

So bleak is the outlook for the party that Yoshimine, 43, a labor lawyer and newcomer to politics, is downplaying his party connection.

“We are portraying Yoshimine not as a representative of the party, but as a representative of the citizens,” campaign manager Wakamatsu said.

Yoshimine’s youth also is being stressed. One of his posters declares: “Yoshimine, 43. Clinton, 46.”

The Socialists’ troubles, however, run deeper than issues of the moment, Wakamatsu said. The party’s heavy reliance upon unions has cost it dearly as organized labor has tumbled into decline.

“Every year, the number of organized union members falls,” Wakamatsu said. “The old unions were formed of blue-collar workers, but service industries have proliferated and very few of their workers join unions.

“Unions that do exist have lost their ability to struggle against management, and their status within companies has declined,” he added. “And as living standards have risen, workers’ demands have diversified beyond wages to such issues as working hours and housing. Unions haven’t accommodated the demands.”

As the Socialists have struggled to separate ideology from their platform, voters have been left in the dark as to exactly what the party now advocates.

Akamatsu’s speech didn’t help. It consisted entirely of the Socialists’ program for political reform, the appeal to elect Socialists to form an opposition-led coalition, and criticism of two of the new conservative parties for failing to clarify whether they would join the Liberal Democrats after the election to keep them in power through a coalition.

No mention was made of any day-to-day or bread-and-butter issues.