Unity Candidate

Deals in a smoke-filled room

At a reception for foreign dignitaries attending funeral services for Masayoshi Ohira, friends introduced the smiling, self-assured man as "our next Prime Minister." He vigorously shook hands with Chinese Premier Hua Guofeng, and confided to President Carter: "I should like to do my best to develop the relationship with your country further."

Barring an unlikely last-minute reversal of form, Liberal Democratic Party members of Japan's Diet (parliament) will meet this week to elect--unanimously, according to most predictions--a new party president to succeed Ohira, who died four weeks ago. Two days after that, the Diet's House of Representatives (lower house) will assemble to endorse the Liberal Democrats' choice as Japan's new Prime Minister. He is Zenko Suzuki, 69, a little-known party wheel horse who unexpectedly emerged last week as the compromise candidate of the Liberal Democrats' feuding factions. Even some of "Zenko-san's" colleagues were surprised by the choice. Said Liberal Democrat Jushiro Komiyama: "It's amazing. He surfaced almost out of the blue."

Suzuki is almost as much a political mystery to his fellow countrymen as he is to foreign diplomats. Although he has sat in the Diet's lower house for 33 years and served for nearly seven years as chairman of the Liberal Democrats' executive board, Suzuki has never held a key Cabinet post. A term as head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Finance is normally considered a requisite proving ground for future Japanese Prime Ministers. Inside the Diet, however, Suzuki has been highly regarded as a tough negotiator with a particular knack for settling party disputes.

A small businessman's son from the underdeveloped Iwate prefecture of northern Japan, Suzuki ran successfully for the Diet in 1947 as a Socialist, but later switched party allegiance. After Ohira's death, he assumed the leadership of the faction. At a conclave of party elders last week, he apparently made a few backroom deals that cemented the support of two powerful Liberal Democratic factions led by former Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka and Takeo Fukuda. And thus, as one party elder put it, "the drama was all over even before the curtain was raised."

Some Tokyo newspapers grumbled that Suzuki had been selected as party boss by misshitsu--roughly translated, the Japanese equivalent of a smoke-filled room. Said the daily Asahi: "Factional considerations have all but eliminated discussion of the ideals and policies to be demanded from Japan's political leadership." As an unproven novice in international politicking, Suzuki starts out as a potential caretaker, who will need to unify the warring factions of his party so that it can govern effectively. For the moment, no one is discounting his chances. After all, his given name, Zenko, literally means "good luck."

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