Japanese Premier Faces Vote of No-Confidence

Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata’s efforts to lure the Socialist Party back into his minority coalition ran into a wall Friday, raising the likelihood that he will be forced to dissolve the lower house of Parliament and call a general election.

The lower house’s steering committee first scheduled a session for early today to vote on a no-confidence motion submitted Thursday by members of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose 38-year rule ended last summer.

At 3 a.m. Friday, however, the committee rescheduled the session for noon today, and it was still uncertain that the vote would be conducted.

Hata could preempt it by resigning, by dissolving the lower house or by an eleventh-hour, surprise compromise with the Socialists.

Ichiro Ozawa, the coalition’s chief strategist, emerged from a 10 1/2-hour meeting with Hata at 3:30 a.m. to say that consultations with the Socialists “are not over yet.” He refused to elaborate.

On Friday, the Socialists stunned Hata, who only the day before had offered to appease them by going through what he believed would be a ritual resignation.

But Wataru Kubo, the Socialists’ secretary general, declared that his party would not support Hata again in a lower house vote that would have to be conducted after the prime minister stepped down.

For more than a month, pledging to support Hata’s reelection, Kubo had made Hata’s “voluntary” resignation a face-saving prerequisite for the party’s return to the coalition it bolted eight weeks ago.

Ozawa immediately withdrew the offer for Hata to quit.

Another meeting between Ozawa and Kubo was scheduled to allow the prime minister’s chief strategist to work out with Hata the coalition’s final reply to the Socialists.

Despite the Socialists’ surprise demand for Hata’s departure, Kubo made no suggestion as to who should replace him as premier.

Hata supporters unofficially proposed a “grand conservative alliance” that would give the Liberal Democrats a slice of the power they lost 11 months ago. But with its no-confidence motion pending, the party rejected the bid.

Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, suggested they would be willing to support Socialist Chairman Tomiichi Murayama as prime minister, with their own leader, Yohei Kono, as vice premier in a coalition between the two parties that have been at each other’s throats since 1955, when both came into existence.

Whether the offer was sincere or merely an attempt to thwart the Socialists’ reunion with the coalition was unclear. No Socialist has been touted as a prime minister since 1947.

Over the years, the party gradually has shed its Marxist ideology and advocacy of a socialist economy. But it still maintains friendly relations with Communist North Korea, advocates strong government subsidies for welfare and favors reducing defense spending.

Its opposition to an opening of Japan’s rice market and its refusal to support an increase in a 3% consumption tax plagued former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa during his eight months in office.

Twelve hours after they joined in electing Hata prime minister on April 25, Socialists bolted his government, leaving the coalition with only 37% of the seats in the lower house. Only the necessity to enact Japan’s 1994 budget--which passed the upper house Thursday--forestalled a challenge to Hata at that time.

Both the Socialists and the Liberal Democrats have condemned what they call “arbitrary, high-handed” decision-making by Ozawa. But they are united on few, if any, other policies.