Japanese gov’t submits postal bills to Diet, aiming to enact laws in mid-Oct.
The government again submitted postal privatization bills to the Diet — about 50 days after Japan’s upper house scrapped them — and hopes they pass in mid-October.
The bills were submitted to the House of Representatives after being endorsed during an extraordinary Cabinet meeting in the morning. Postal privatization is a centerpiece policy of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s structural reform drive.
The fresh bills are almost identical to those the House of Councillors rejected Aug. 8, when opponents of them, including members of Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party, voted against them.
They are certain to pass the ongoing special Diet session as Japan’s governing coalition of the LDP and New Komeito party took more than two-thirds of the lower house seats in the Sept. 11 general election. The special Diet session convened last week for a 42-day run through Nov. 1.
Upper house LDP rebels have recently changed their stance and now support the bills.
Japan’s governing coalition wants to shorten Diet deliberations on the bills as much as possible, given the some 200 hours already spent discussing them during the previous ordinary session.
Legislation based on the bills would see Japan Post split Oct. 1, 2007, into four stock companies that, under a holding company, would take over the public corporation’s mail delivery, savings, “kampo” life insurance and post office network services.
The start of the privatization process was pushed back six months from April 1, 2007, the date prescribed in the aborted bills.
The holding company would dispose of its stakes in the two financial units over the 10 years to October 2017 to place them under complete private ownership, a goal Koizumi has stuck to.
But the government has accepted LDP requests to allow the holding company to buy back those shares immediately after the end of the 10-year transition period and maintain the network of post offices.
Koizumi has argued that privatization will help diversify postal services while reducing the number of public servants by turning staff into private company employees. Opponents fear the policy could result in the closure of the bulk of post offices across Japan.
The Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s main opposition party, plans to counter the governing coalition move with alternative bills, including one to lower the 10 million yen cap on postal savings per person to 7 million yen.
