Ex-Premier Murayama Reelected Party Chairman in Japan

Tomiichi Murayama, who abruptly resigned as Japan’s prime minister last week, overwhelmingly won reelection as Socialist Party chairman Tuesday to face the daunting task of averting his party’s annihilation in national elections later this year.

Murayama trounced Tadatoshi Akiba, a U.S.-trained mathematician and liberal challenger in what was billed as a battle for the party’s soul. Since the Socialists overturned their major policies in 1994 to take power alongside their longtime rivals, the conservative Liberal Democrats, they have rapidly lost public support--now down to 11%--and more than 20,000 members.

The Socialists’ decline has also left Japan with no credible liberal party, because the Liberal Democrats and the major opposition New Frontier Party both spring from the same conservative political lineage.

Akiba argued that the Socialist Party must restore its traditional policies--such as opposition to nuclear power and support for the eventual closing of U.S. military bases in Japan--to reclaim disillusioned followers and attract new converts. He also advocated more public input in decision-making through national referendums, citizen watchdogs and similar measures.

But Akiba managed to win only 10,440 votes, or 15.3%, compared to Murayama’s 57,591.

In an interview, Akiba said his defeat could not be seen as a rejection of his message because he was never given a chance to deliver it. Murayama declined to debate him, and no media organization invited the two men to appear in the same forum.

Party leaders said they saw the poll as an affirmation of their current direction: adjusting their policies and allying with the Liberal Democrats and New Party Harbinger, formed in 1993 by Liberal Democrat defectors, in the ruling coalition.

But to avert devastating losses in national elections expected sometime this year, Murayama and Masayoshi Takemura, leader of the small New Party Harbinger, have agreed to form a new “liberal” party after this year’s budget is passed at the end of March, according to media reports.

Such faithful followers as Sachiko Ando, a Socialist for 40 years, view the move as one more step in the destruction of their beloved party.

“I’m so mad I want to kick them,” Ando, a shop owner, said of party leaders. “We have to be a party that can say wrong things are wrong.”