Japan postal reform: Koizumi's check is
in the mail By Richard Hanson
TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's check
is in the mail, so to speak. He just succeeded in
winning, and not by a landslide, his own cabinet's
approval of the long-term privatization of the creaking
historical relic, the Japanese postal system. In keeping
with the spirit of the slow-moving postal system, its
breakup and reform will take at least 10 years.
After more than three years of hot-and-cold
campaigning, Koizumi has more or less won a key victory
- a basic plan to privatize the post office - in a
battle that some once feared could have become his
political Waterloo within his own ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP).
Yes, we are talking
about Japan Post, a venerable 19th-century institution
that has been part of the focus of a 21st-century
political struggle within the LDP, since before Koizumi
was elected to the Diet (parliament) in the early 1970s.
The skirmishing has been going full-tilt within
the powerful factions of the ruling party ever since the
brash, reform-minded prime minister defeated his most
conservative opponents for control of the LDP.
But right down to the last cabinet vote, the
split within the LDP was evident. What the cabinet has
done is adopt a basic plan for the privatization of
"Japan Post", the name given the old Postal Service
after the first round of "structural reform" was passed
two years ago. The plan envisages a breakup of the
public corporation that was formed at the time; it will
start in April 2007 and involve a 10-year process.
The factional divides were obvious.
First, the cabinet adopted the plan without
gaining the official approval from the ruling party bloc
consisting of the LDP and its coalition partner, New
Komeito. They, however, withheld a decision in the face
of fierce opposition to the plan. The "basic plan" calls
for Japan Post to be divided into four companies - mail,
postal savings, insurance, and counter operations. A
holding organization will own the four companies.
One sign of how shaky this plan may be is that
Koizumi plans to set up a new government task force
comprising all cabinet ministers to supervise the
privatization. The actual blueprint came out of another
Koizumi creation, the Japan Council on Economic and
Fiscal Policy, which approved it earlier. This group is
appointed and chaired by Koizumi himself.
In a
broad sense, all this is symbolic of the change that
swept the once-seamless world of political
power-brokering that in the post-World War II era
galvanized politics, big (often government-linked)
business, and the permanent bureaucracy. What Koizumi
has initiated is not at all revolutionary. What he has
done is win office and hold on to it long enough - since
April 2001, when he won an LDP primary contest - to
begin to see results.
The biggest result has
been to slash the power of the traditional factions that
grew influential as the LDP, through mergers of
mainstream parties, minus the communists and socialists,
consolidated its control over the government from 1955
onward. The LDP has been out of power only once since
then for a brief period in the early 1990s.
Koizumi saw an opportunity in essence to force
the major factions to accept his rule. As a result, the
prime minister can take credit for credible if not
brilliant performance in a general election last
November and an Upper House contest in July, when the
LDP failed to win a big victory, but lost little.
What was not anticipated in the political world
was the sudden emergence of a credible opposition party
in the past year, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
The party has just re-elected a still-young and
promising leadership under its president, Katsuya Okada,
a former bureaucrat who left the LDP in the early 1990s
to help form a new opposition party.
The LDP can
probably count on Koizumi to remain its leader for the
next two years of his final term as party president. The
question is whether he will be able to navigate a number
of thorny problems - and a possible change of presidents
in the United States. Koizumi and President George W
Bush have proved themselves staunch allies, having
entered office within three months of each other. They
were natural allies after the September 11, 2001, terror
attacks in New York and on the Pentagon.
Indeed,
Prime Minister Koizumi has pushed the bilateral
relationship to a new level of cooperation on security
matters, commitments to warships to the Indian Ocean and
troops to Iraq. Koizumi has flown off to official visits
to Brazil, Mexico and the US, where he attended the
United Nations General Assembly and met Bush.
All of this warlike behavior has been swallowed
by much of the Japanese public that is still giving him
support rates in the polls of about 40%. These numbers
fell sharply after a spate of scandals involving
pension-fund fraud among a wide swath of politicians,
including Koizumi himself many years ago and an ex-DPJ
leader. Koizumi is also under fire for the way he sent
troops to Iraq and committed to the "postwar" coalition.
On the political plus side, most Japanese
support his handling of volatile relations with a
menacing North Korea. Koizumi was the first Japanese
leader to visit that country, where officials stunned
the nation by revelations of long-suspected kidnappings
of Japanese.
According to one senior Japanese
government official, most people are supporting Koizumi
across various issues simply because there are not many
alternatives. Supporters of the old post office are not
very strong or numerous and this is not a concern for
most people.
"Even if Koizumi faces some
opposition inside the LDP, I don’t think that it will
actually reach the level which can actually destroy his
power," said one official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "The importance of the issue is to emphasize
the fact that this is a very pure political message
being issued by Mr Koizumi to both the Japanese public
and also the members of the LDP."
Until now such
issues as reforming the postal service have been
long-standing political taboos.
"Just touching
on this issue is a very clear message to the Japanese
people to the effect that 'I think we have to change.'
The prime minister himself has touched upon this issue,"
the official said. "So it can be compared probably to
the United States if the president [were] advocating the
banning of guns - it's an issue of that kind."
Thirty years ago politicians of all stripes,
including the young Koizumi, would have agreed. But not
anymore.
Richard Hanson, based in
Tokyo, is the author of Money Lords: The Pride and
Folly of Japan's Finance Ministry Elites.
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