Nonaka threatens to drop support

Hiromu Nonaka, an influential politician in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), on Tuesday openly expressed his displeasure at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s remarks Monday on the privatization of postal services, threatening to drop his support for a package of bills on the issue.

“I thought those bills should pass the Diet to ensure the smooth launch of a (planned) public postal corporation, but now that the prime minister said such a thing, maybe I should reconsider it,” Nonaka told reporters.

On Monday, Koizumi told Klaus Zumwinkel, president of Deutsche Post AG, “I succeeded in filling in a moat surrounding the castle through submitting the bills. Next, I will aim at the donjon.”

The remarks using a metaphor of war tactics were taken to mean Koizumi’s strong willingness to privatize the state-run postal services, which he regards a key pillar of his structural reform scheme.

Deutsche Post is a private German company established from a governmental body that became a public corporation in 1990, a process Koizumi is seeking in the project to privatize Japan’s postal services.

The government submitted a package of four bills related to postal privatization to the Diet earlier this month.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives began deliberation on the bills, which would allow private firms to begin offering mail services ander the three postal services — mail, postal savings and “kampo” life insurance.

Nonaka, a former LDP secretary general, heads a group of LDP lawmakers with vested interests in the postal sector.

The lawmakers have stiffly opposed privatization, saying allowing private firms into the industry may lead to the closure of some publicly run post offices.

They were also offended when the government submitted the four bills to parliament without obtaining prior consent from the LDP, a step rarely taken by the government.

However, a mood of support for the bills quickly spread within the party after Nonaka said Saturday they should be enacted during the current Diet session, which ends June 19.