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Koizumi's support surges
Public support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has surged since his landslide parliamentary victory, a survey showed Tuesday, even as the government warned his much touted postal reform plan could be postponed until 2008. The approval rating for Koizumi's Cabinet jumped to 59 percent after the weekend's elections, a gain of nearly 12 percentage points from last month, according to a poll taken Monday and Tuesday by Kyodo News Agency. Sunday's ballot boosted the standing of Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party by nearly 20 percent in the lower house and handed ruling lawmakers a two-thirds majority along with a coalition partner. Privatizing the nation's postal savings and insurance system was a key Koizumi campaign pledge. The reforms were slapped down last month by Parliament's upper house with the help of rebels from within Koizumi's own party. The leader has since purged opponents from the LDP and has vowed to push the reform bills through during a special session of parliament to be called later this month. Now reform architect Heizo Takenaka, the country's economic minister, said the launch of the privatization would be delayed by up to six months because of concerns about computer systems being ready in time, media reports said Tuesday. The 10-year privatization process was slated to start October 1, 2007, and will now be pushed back as late as April 2008, Kyodo and national broadcaster NHK said. "It looks like the beginning of the privatization will be delayed by half a year," said Yu Kameoka, a spokesman for Koizumi, adding that dates have not been finalized. "The preparation needed for privatization will require some time, so there will be a delay." Public backing of postal reform helped drive Koizumi's stunning election victory. With a two-thirds majority in the lower house, Koizumi will now be able to override opposing votes in the upper chamber. But that might not be necessary. A group of 11 upper house defectors who rejected the postal bills the first time said Tuesday they will heed the public mandate and back the bills in the new session, Kyodo reported. The turnaround piggybacks on Koizumi's surging approval rating. Of those supporting his Cabinet in the latest Kyodo poll, 20 percent said they admire his leadership _ double the 10 percent from a month earlier. About 32 percent of all respondents said postal reform was the most important issue in Sunday's lower house elections, while only 26 percent said pension reform, the main platform of the opposition, was the top concern. Koizumi seeks to privatize the postal system and its US$3 trillion in savings and insurance schemes by 2017. Those savings, long used as a slush fund for LDP pork-barrel projects in rural areas, make it the world's biggest financial institution. Proponents say privatization will put its money into more efficient investments and produce a bigger boost for Japan's economy, which is the world's second-biggest but has stagnated for years. The plans resonate with a public worried that bloated government bureaucracies are sapping economic growth while the aging of the population raises questions about how Japan will pay for future retirees. Kyodo's nationwide telephone survey polled 1,493 randomly selected households with eligible voters, from which 1,025 eligible voters responded. It gave no margin of error.
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