まゆの部屋

I am very thankful for you
and the friendship you have given me.
Have a wonderful day!

************

POLITICAL PULSE / Koizumi's political instincts lead to sudden frontal attack



Yoshio Okubo

This is classic Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister known for the high-handedness with which he makes decisions and takes action.

"This is a critical moment right now. My political instinct tells me so," Koizumi told reporters on March 31, after instructing the Cabinet members responsible to finalize government bills on postal services privatization.

With his command, Koizumi interrupted the ongoing dialogue between Cabinet ministers and Liberal Democratic Party leaders over the postal reforms, while giving the government the go-ahead to conclude its internal debate on the matter.

There were fears that this attitude would just irritate the LDP members who oppose the postal reforms. Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, Koizumi's mentor in the LDP, and Mikio Aoki, head of the LDP caucus in the House of Councillors, both warned Koizumi to use more caution, but he did not heed their advice.

The Cabinet ministers worked over the weekend to put the finishing touches on the bills, which in the end had to be completed through a decision by the prime minister, wrapping it all up in four short days, leaving one to wonder what the seemingly endless debates before Koizumi's intervention were all about.

Most of the LDP skeptics reacted coolly to this move by Koizumi, as expected, with one of them saying, "I can't understand why the prime minister is in such a hurry" to push the postal reform bills.

But there were some small but significant changes. Some members of the LDP's policy divisions related to postal services are now expressing their support for privatization--something unheard before the Koizumi intervention.

It is now clear that Koizumi, with his bold frontal attack, brought the deadlock to an end and moved the entire postal reform issue into a new stage.

Why did Koizumi decide at this moment to conclude the debates within the Cabinet? The only explanation he provided was that it was "my political instinct."

But after talking to those close to him, I would say Koizumi's move was not just a casual idea, but an extremely calculated action.

Since January, when the postal reform debates between the LDP and the government began in earnest, Koizumi sat back and watched developments. In March, he finally intervened, urging LDP leaders, including Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe, to speed up the whole process as the debates seemed to be going nowhere.

Later that month, Koizumi was close to winning approval in the Diet for the fiscal 2005 budget. But there was still no good news on the postal services privatization front. The prime minister's initial plan to submit the bills for deliberation in April started to look shaky.

"There will be a moment of truth either this week or next," a frustrated Koizumi said at a press conference on March 23. He then wasted no time getting to work on finalizing the government plan on privatization.

Koizumi's reading of the situation was as follows. The main reason the LDP-government negotiation was going nowhere was not the gap between the two. Rather, it was because the government was not speaking with one voice.

To be more precise, there was a rift between Heizo Takenaka, minister for postal services privatization, and Taro Aso, the internal affairs and communications minister.

Takenaka insisted that, of the four companies to be created as a result of privatization, the banking and insurance services should be fully privatized by 2017, while Aso advocated a unified management of the four, with government oversight.

Senior LDP members complained to Koizumi that nothing could move forward unless the Cabinet could agree.

Meanwhile, through the government's discussions with the ruling party, which started in January, Koizumi was learning what the LDP wanted as far as postal reforms were concerned.

Aso, in fact, was an advocate for LDP members who were skeptical about privatization.

The Takenaka-Aso feud within the Cabinet was in fact a proxy fight between Koizumi, who has insisted on quick and full privatization, and the LDP skeptics, who say not so fast.

Koizumi realized that settling the dispute within the Cabinet between Takenaka and Aso would pave the way for settling the Cabinet-LDP tussle.

The Cabinet fight was settled and the government plan for the bills, announced on Monday, was met with praise by LDP leaders. "The gap between the government and the party has narrowed substantially," one senior member said. This is precisely what Koizumi expected.

But there are still many obstacles ahead.

Those in the LDP opposed to privatization are not united. One group in opposition sees no point in privatization in the first place, while others have different motives, namely to find reasons to attack and topple Koizumi's government.

In any case, Koizumi's postal services privatization bills will be dead on arrival if 44 LDP members in the House of Representatives or 18 in the House of Councillors vote against them.

"Spending a lot of time does not always bring about an amicable solution to conflicts," Koizumi said. But it is far from certain that this frontal attack will be any more successful. It will be extremely difficult for the bills to be passed in the Diet if Koizumi fails to gain approval from the ruling coalition first.

If that happens, a rocky political situation could be inevitable. We have not yet seen the moment of truth in Koizumi's struggle for postal services reform, which may either make or break his own political career.


Okubo is political news editor of The Yomiuri Shimbun.