LDP dissent over Japan Post reform continues
You know how the Japan Post privatization proposal was presented to the LDP last week? It’s still, not unpredictably, stuck there:
A group of 101 Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers met Wednesday to reiterate their opposition to the government’s postal privatization plan and ruled out any compromise on the issue.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi meanwhile renewed his pledge not to change the postal reform framework adopted by his Cabinet earlier this month.The standoff between Koizumi and his opponents in the LDP, of which he is president, is making it increasingly difficult for the government to meet its goal of submitting its postal privatization bills to the Diet by the end of the month.
At Wednesday’s meeting, organized and chaired by former House of Representatives Speaker Tamisuke Watanuki, the lawmakers adopted a resolution opposing the government’s plan and released their own outline to reform Japan Post while keeping it a semigovernmental corporation.
Someday when my stomach is less on edge, we’ll talk about Japanese semi-governmental corporations in all their resource-hoovering glory. Suffice it to say that, while “semi-governmental” sounds like a nice, friendly compromise, in execution it ends up increasing the number of people who have access to the goodies and decreasing the number of people who feel compelled to husband them. The Sankei did report that not everyone who went to Watanuki’s “study session” last week symptathized with his anti-privatization position (one is cited as saying that because he’d received his invitation from the leaders of his faction, he felt unable to refuse it). But there were 96 Diet attendees there, and 101 who joined him in his resolution this week, so maybe he was pretty persuasive.
In any case, Prime Minister Koizumi has been adamant that the proposal not be doctored before officially becoming a Diet bill. The deadline he set was the end of April, so there’s still plenty of time for fun.