Man from nowhere is Japan's new P.M.

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 17

Man from nowhere is Japan's new P.M.

By

DONALD KIRK,

“Observer,” London

He is barely known to most Japanese but he has emerged as the compromise successor to the late Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira after a bit'er backstage struggle among quarrelling factions of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

His name is Zenko Suzuki, and he strikes most analysts, Japanese and

foreign, as a diligent party hack with few real qualifications for the mantle he has inherited. He was elected their president by an overwhelming majority of senior leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party last week, and by tradition, the L.D.P. majority in the Lower House of Parliament automatically elects the party president as Prime Minister, The leadership settled on the 69-year-old Suzuki on the basis of his work for the party, and the fact that he succeeded Ohira as leader of Ohira’s faction in the Lower House. That enabled him to reach an understanding with Ohira’s main political ally, Kakuei Tanaka, a- former Prime. Minister disgraced in a series of scandals but _ still firmiy entrenched within his own important faction. • Suzuki, an M.P. for 33 years, had. never expressed any ambition '■to become Prime Minister. He shot up in potential -when he was canvassed as a candidate by two factions bitterly opposed to Tanaka. “We have put aside minor differences for the sake,of a common .objective,” says a member of the faction controlled by Takeo Fukuda, a former Prime • Minister who had fought Ohira throughout the last 18 months of his life. - * . - .

Takeo Miki, also- a former Prime Minister, and

Fukuda’s ally in his fight against Ohira, agreed to back Suzuki in the interests of “political purification and dissolution of factions.” At the heart of the agreeement, say political sources, was the refusal of Fukuda and Miki to accept Tanaka’s main ally, Yasuhiro Nakasone, who had served in Tanaka’s Cabinet from 1972 to 1974 as Minister of International Trade and Industry after having previously been . Minister in charge of the Defence Agency. Nakasone’s critics maintained he was too “hawkish” and accused him of shifting his positions too quickly in an effort to get votes — a reputation that got him the nickname of “Weather-vane.” Tanaka rejected the other leading contender, Toshio Komoto, also a former Minister of International Trade and Industry and a former member of the Miki faction. Komoto had resigned from the Miki faction in order to broaden his following within the party. Suzuki has held only secondary Cabinet positions, including that of Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the Tanaka Cabinet from 1976 to 1978. He has spent much of his political career fighting for Japan’s huge fishing interests, which have reportedly repaid the debt with lavish political contributions. Elected to the Diet as a Socialist in 1947, Suzuki switched to the conservative Liberal Party in .1949 with the explanation that ‘.‘one must join the majority to help one’s home town.” Six years later, he joined the L.D.P., which has ruled both Houses, of Parliament — and every Government — without a break for the past 25 years. By agreeing on Suzuki, L.D.P. leaders hope to end the bitter feuding that threatened to tear the party apart before Ohira’s death; The question, though, is whether Suzuki has the ability to govern effectively. “He is not viewed as a man of presidential calibre,” said “Asahi Shimbun,” Japan’s most authoritative newspaper. A young Japanese student put the problem more succinctly: “We hardly know him; Who is he? He’s just a name in the

newspapers.” Copyright, London Observer Service.