The administration of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori managed to survive its greatest crisis Monday night when the governing parties barely voted down a no-confidence motion sponsored by the opposition parties. Tension was mounting toward a final showdown over the motion late Monday night because two LDP faction leaders and their followers appeared to be preparing to vote for the motion despite increasing pressure applied by party executives.

A couple of hours before the expected vote on the motion, however, Mr. Koichi Kato, former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party and head of the party's second largest faction, and Taku Yamasaki, leader of a smaller faction, decided that they and their followers would abstain from the session rather than vote for the motion. While Mr. Kato described their decision as an "honorable retreat," his words rang hollow. As has typically been the case, the greatest political drama involving the fate of the Mori government ended in a political anticlimax.

This outcome came as a disappointment to the opposition parties, which had hoped that the motion would trigger a Diet dissolution and a division of the LDP, leading to a decisive political realignment in which they would play a central role, possibly with defectors from the LDP. This scenario ended as merely a political pipe dream.