Japan's upper house of parliament voted down legislation to split up and sell the country's postal service yesterday, prompting Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to follow through on a threat to call snap elections that could shake the ruling party's grip on power.
Defections from Koizumi's own Liberal Democratic Party helped defeat the reform package by a 125-108 vote, dealing a painful setback to the prime minister's longtime quest to privatize the postal savings and insurance businesses and open their massive deposits to private investors.
Koizumi called an emergency Cabinet meeting, and ministers -- with one dissenting vote -- decided to dissolve the lower house of parliament, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said. The order was later read before the lower house at a specially called session, after which the disbanded lawmakers filed out of the chamber.
PHOTO: AFP
"The upper house decided that postal privatization is not needed. So I would like to ask the general public whether it supports or opposes it. That's why I dissolved parliament," Koizumi told a group of reporters after the dissolution was announced. "I will do my best to win the elections so that I can continue the reforms."
September election
Media reports said the LDP and its coalition partner, the Komeito Party, had agreed to hold the ballot on Sept. 11. Campaigning for the chamber's 480 seats was to begin Aug. 30.
The dissent over the package revealed deep divisions within the LDP, which has held onto power almost continuously since its founding in 1955. Reform was expected to be a major issue in the campaign, and some speculated that it could split the LDP into separate camps.
The legislative package would have created the world's largest private bank, but opposition was strong among opposition and LDP lawmakers who said the measure would cut postal services to rural areas and lead to layoffs.
Proponents were disheartened by the vote.
"These were the bills that put us at the crossroads, whether Japan can create a small government or it is headed toward creating a big government," said Economy Minister Heizo Takenaka, the main architect of the reform. "The rejection is a major blow to Japan's future and its economy."
The opposition Democratic Party, meanwhile, started gearing up for an election fight, submitting a no-confidence measure against Koizumi's government.
That move was cut short by the lower house's dissolution, but the Democratic Party has made strong gains in elections last year's upper house elections and in the previous lower house ballot in 2003.
Opposition hopeful
"We've been steadily making efforts for this day," Democratic Party leader Katsuya Okada told his party members. "Now we have finally come to this opportunity to change the government."
Shizuka Kamei, a leading LDP opponent of the reforms, suggested he regretted the divisions that the legislation had created within the ruling party. Top lawmakers had tried to convince Koizumi over the weekend not to go ahead with his election threat.
"The results shows the conscience of the upper house," Kamei said. "The prime minister should come to his senses. It will be bad for Japan if we do something like this over and over."
Proponents of the reform said it was needed to put the postal saving system's massive deposits into the hands of private investors and provide a strong jump-start to the economy, which is only now emerging from a decade-long slowdown.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification