Tokyo, July 5: Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, 54-year-old building contractor with practically no formal education, was to-day picked by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to guide the destinies of the world’s third largest economic power at least for the next three years. As had been expected, Mr. Tanaka triumphed over his closest rival, the Foreign Minister, Mr. Takeo Fukuda, with a comfortable margin in the elections held to choose a successor to the outgoing Prime Minister, Mr. Sato, at the 27th extraordinary convention of the party this morning. Although there were four contenders for the post of party president -- and automatically Japan’s Premiership -- the race was really between Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Fukuda as the other two candidates, the former Foreign Ministers, Mr. Masayoshi Ohira and Mr. Takeo Miki, were given little chance of winning. None of the candidates got the necessary majority of 239 votes on the first ballot. Mr. Tanaka captured 156 votes and Mr. Fukuda was a close second with 150 while Mr. Ohira made a surprisingly good show garnering 101 votes and Mr. Miki got 59. Under the party’s procedures if no one candidate secures a clear majority on the first ballot the top two contenders vie for this post in the second ballot. In to-day’s case the outcome of such a second ballot was not hard to predict in view of an electoral alliance which Mr. Tanaka had forged earlier with Mr. Ohira and Mr. Miki under which factions led by the latter two had agreed to vote for Mr. Tanaka in case of a second ballot.
