Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi may have set the stage for his own undoing by betting his political future on reforming the post office, an issue many voters care little about, analysts say.
Koizumi on Monday called early elections for Thursday, in part to punish defectors in his long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), who defeated his plan to privatize Japan Post, which is also the world's largest bank.
But while the issue has consumed him since he was postal minister in 1992 -- Koizumi believes a turn to the free market would help both the post and the economy run better -- many Japanese have other concerns.
"For voters, Koizumi's postal reform is hardly an issue. Voters will be confused about the rationale of the snap election," said Minoru Morita, a well-known political analyst who appears frequently on television.
"If the LDP makes postal reform one of its main campaign platforms, voters will simply ignore it and the party could lose a majority," Morita said.
In 1993, the LDP lost nearly four decades of single-handed rule, spending 10 months in opposition before returning to power through an unlikely alliance with the Socialists.
Now the party is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from the main opposition Democratic Party, a motley centrist group of former LDP and Socialist lawmakers.
Koizumi has made slitting up the post the center of his domestic agenda, and yesterday said he would punish the LDP defectors who killed the plan in parliament as he tries to rally the party for the election next month.
"I will be merciless. I will decide [candidates] depending only on whether they are against or for the plan to privatize the postal system," he was quoted as saying in the Mainichi Shimbun.
"Koizumi's stubbornness on the postal reforms looks like a folly for voters. Voters will ask, `Why is Koizumi wasting time for an election now?'" said Hiroshi Kawahara, professor of Japanese politics at Tokyo's Waseda University.
"Voters hardly care about the postal reform. They are more concerned about pension reforms, taxes, Iraq and deadlocked talks with North Korea. But this election touches none of them," Kawahara said.
Privatization would have cleared parliament's upper house with up to 17 LDP lawmakers casting dissenting votes. But a staggering 30 LDP members voted against or did not show up for the ballot Monday.
The post office sits on ?355 trillion (US$3.2 trillion) in savings and insurance, effectively making it the world's largest financial institution.
Koizumi believes that breaking it into four entities, including a bank, would give the private sector reason to compete and help Japan out of more than a decade of zero to little growth.
But privatization would likely mean massive job cuts in the postal system while remaining workers would lose job security along with government benefits.
Even so, poll after poll has shown the Japanese public is little interested in the postal reform.
Fewer than one percent of respondents in a July survey by Japan's top-selling daily, the Yomiuri Shimbun, said that privatizing the post was their priority issue.
"The LDP will likely face a very tough election," said Tetsuro Kato, a professor of political science at Hitotsubashi University.
One question is whether New Komeito, a Buddhist-oriented party which provides Koizumi a vital 34 seats in the 480-member lower house, could be tempted to bolt the coalition if the LDP fares poorly.
Koizumi -- who has been in power for more than four years, longer than any Japanese premier in two decades -- vowed he would quit if the LDP and New Komeito together do not secure a majority.
"He is a lame duck. The upcoming election will only confirm the end of the Koizumi government," Kato said.
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