Obuchi's death may lead to early poll

By F. J. Khergamvala

TOKYO, MAY 14. The ailing former Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Keizo Obuchi, died late this afternoon at a hospital in Tokyo, of a stroke suffered on April 1, when he effectively ceased to be Prime Minister.

After a respectable pause, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is now expected to announce a general election for June 25, which is Mr. Obuchi's birthday.

The condition of Mr. Obuchi, 62, who has been in a coma for six weeks, deteriorated late on Saturday night. Mr. Obuchi's elder brother and some high-level party officials came in from out of Tokyo to visit Mr Obuchi.

Mr. Yoshiro Mori, who took over as Prime Minister, was in Okinawa to inspect the upcoming G-8 Summit facilities when news broke about Mr. Obuchi's death.

Almost every analyst has linked the timing of the general election, and the ruling LDP's prospects to the sympathy vote, so much so that the expected date, June 25 was chosen primarily to extract such sympathy.

Mr. Minoru Morita, a well- known commentator, predicted within a fortnight of Mr. Obuchi's hospitalisation that the LDP is likely to select that specific date for the election.

The ruling LDP is the dominant party in a three-party coalition that also consists of the New Conservative Party, a splinter group from the Liberals, and the Sokka Gakkai backed New Komeito. The LDP's alliance with the New Komeito has been heavily criticised, especially among traditional LDP supporters as a marriage of convenience.

Whether Mr. Obuchi's passing will attract back those whom he alienated by this action remains to be seen. Mr. Mori, who will lead the party into the election, was the main architect of the ruling party's arrangement with the New Komeito.

Mr. Obuchi took over the reins of the party and became the country's 54th Prime Minister, at the end of July 1998, after the humiliating loss of the LDP in the elections to a part of the upper House forced the resignation of Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto.

With almost nothing in his favour except the strength of numbers enjoyed by his faction within the party, Mr. Obuchi had nowhere to go but up. First, he set about consolidating his position within the party. Next, he succeeded in almost decimating the Opposition parties.

The Obuchi style, characterised by a self-deprecating sense of humour, candour, as well as political resolve soon altered his public image. Over a period of time he quite literally may have worked himself to his death.

Mr. Obuchi died just a little over two months away from his foreign policy signature event, the G-8 Summit in Okinawa. It was Mr. Obuchi who selected Okinawa as the venue, for a variety of reasons.

Overall, the public had come to trust and believe in their leader because of his actions, and not merely because of the traditional deference to authority.

Therefore, on the domestic front too, the upcoming elections would have been a fine reward at the apex of a political life that began when he was elected to the lower House at the age of 26, after campaigning as a college student on a bicycle. He belonged to Gumma province, as did former Prime Ministers, Mr. Takeo Fukuda and Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone.

A side effect of Mr. Obuchi's death may be some more serious questioning of the circumstances that led to his hospitalisation and passing the baton temporarily to his chief aide, Mr. Mikio Aoki. Many in Japan cast doubts on the facts presented as leading to Mr. Mori's assumption of power. The Asahi Shimbun has cast further doubts, through a front-paged story in its Saturday evening editions that said it was impossible that Mr. Obuchi could have actually asked Mr. Aoki to take over the office temporarily.

The paper said Mr. Aoki's explanation of how Mr. Obuchi asked him to mind the store may be inaccurate, because well before the time Mr. Aoki claimed to have heard such implicit instructions, the Prime Minister found it difficult to hold meaningful conversations and that it would have been ``a miracle'' for Mr. Obuchi to convey such advice.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Front Page
Previous : Trishul test-fired
Next     : 40 killed in bus accident