The Liberal Democrats just hang on
He is a polite Prime Minister. He is a humble Prime Minister. He is a grave and austere Prime Minister.
—Takao Fujinami, deputy secretary-general, Liberal Democratic Party
Above all, he is very lucky even to be Prime Minister. Pundits and polls alike had predicted a respectable victory for Yasuhiro Nakasone and his Liberal Democrats, so the news last week sent a shokku from the southern tip of Kyushu to northern Hokkaido. When the ballots were counted for the 511-member lower house of parliament, the L.D.P. had failed to win a majority, only the third time that has happened since the party came to power in 1955. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats' loss of 36 seats, from 286 to 250, was the largest they had ever suffered. Only by swiftly securing the support of nine independent deputies did Nakasone emerge with a perilously slim working majority of 259 seats. That should allow him to continue his domestic and foreign policies, albeit at a considerably slower pace.
The voters' rejection shocked no one so much as Nakasone, who is halfway through his two-year term as party leader. "It was a severe result for me," said the weary Prime Minister. "I have to take cautious steps."
The first of those steps was to quell unhappiness among the five often cantankerous political blocs that make up the L.D.P. As head of the party's fourth largest faction, Nakasone, 65, depends on the approval of fellow powerbrokers to stay on as both party leader and Prime Minister. Thus Nakasone devoted most of his energies last week to greeting delegation after delegation of supporters at his official residence in downtown Tokyo and venturing forth to the offices of L.D.P. leaders to pay his respects. Much of the time he was bargaining with his backers and appeasing his critics; throughout, the sometimes haughty Nakasone acted like a man transformed.
Those labors paid off. After he promised to reform the party and eliminate the influence in it of tainted former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, the L.D.P. elders agreed to back Nakasone for Prime Minister when the new Diet convenes this week. But choosing a Cabinet and awarding committee posts will be more difficult and time consuming as each L.D.P. faction makes its deal with him in return for its support. Nakasone must then cope with the opposition. The Socialist Party, under its energetic new leader, Masashi Ishibashi, 59, strengthened its position as the mam opposition party by picking up eleven seats, for a total of 112. In its best showing ever, the Komeito (Clean Government) Party won 58 seats, up from 31. The Democratic Socialists elected 38 deputies, a gain of six, while the New Liberal Club, an L.D.P. offshoot, lost two of its ten seats.
Ironically, one of the big winners was Tanaka, 65, leader of the largest faction within the L.D.P., whose bribery conviction last October had forced Nakasone to call the election. Despite the guilty verdict and opposition charges of "money politics," Tanaka's constituents in the northwestern prefecture of Niigata re-elected him with 221,000 votes, his most resounding victory since he first won the seat 36 years ago.