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Parliament chooses Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister
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Parliament chooses Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister
A special session of Japan’s parliament confirmed Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister yesterday, clearing the way for him to press on with a reform program including privatization of the postal system after his party’s landslide election victory this month.
Koizumi called the election after rebels in his own party voted with the opposition in the upper house to kill bills to privatize Japan Post, a financial services giant with $3 trillion in assets. He had cast the election as a referendum on postal privatization, which he considers the core of his reform agenda.
Ahead of the parliamentary vote, all members of Koizumi’s cabinet tendered their resignations, but all were expected to be reappointed later in the day.
Koizumi, who first took office in April 2001, was chosen leader by members of the 480-seat lower house, where his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took a commanding 296 seats in the September 11 general election, ensuring he would remain prime minister.
Koizumi, who has said he has no plans to stay on once his tenure as party president expires next September, has said he will quickly re-submit the postal bills and he is expected to reshuffle his cabinet once they are passed. The bills are expected to be voted on in October and look certain to get through. Parliament will sit until November 1. “Enactment of postal privatization bills is the top item on the agenda,” LDP secretary general Tsutomu Takebe told reporters.
The landslide election win secured for the LDP, which has governed Japan for most of the last half century, its first majority in an election in 15 years. While the postal bills were defeated in the upper house, which was not part of the general election, several upper house members who did not support the bills have since said they will now back the legislation given the scale of the LDP’s victory. The LDP has been governing in a coalition with the Buddhist-backed New Komeito party in recent years and Koizumi has said this will continue despite the overwhelming election win.
Public support</B>
A media survey published on yesterday underscored the strength of public support for Koizumi and hopes for reform.
Koizumi’s support rating rose to 62 percent in a survey by the Yomiuri newspaper over the weekend, up 14.3 percentage points from a similar survey in August. Disapproval of Koizumi fell to 29.9 percent, down 10.9 points from August. Asked what they wanted cabinet to give top priority, 61 percent of respondents said social security reform, followed by 57 percent who wanted steps to improve the economy.
Other top responses related to North Korea and steps to deal with a declining birth rate, the newspaper said. Postal privatization was ninth among 17 options offered.
<B>Masayuki KITANO</B>
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<B>Profile</B>
■ Junichiro Koizumi is the current Prime Minister of Japan. Since winning leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 2001, he has become known as an advocate of reform, focusing on Japan’s government debt and the privatization of its postal service. In 2005, he led the LDP to win one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern Japanese history. He was born in Kanagawa Prefecture on January 8, 1942, to Junya Koizumi, a director general of the Defense Agency and a second-generation Diet member, and was educated at Yokosuka High School and Keio University, where he studied economics. He attended the London School of Economics and briefly University College London before returning to Japan in December 1969 on the death of his father. He married Kayoko Miyamoto in 1978. The marriage ended in divorce in 1982 and he vowed never to marry again. He has three sons, two of whom live with him (Kotaro Koizumi and Shinjiro Koizumi) and have not met their mother since the divorce. The youngest, Yoshinaga Miyamoto, a student at Keio University, has never met his father and was turned away when he tried to meet Junichiro Koizumi by attending his grandmother’s funeral. Koizumi’s grandfather was Matajiro Koizumi. He is a fan of Elvis Presley and the Japanese rock band X Japan. After an initial, failed attempt to get elected, Koizumi became a member of the Lower House for the 11th Kanagawa Prefecture in December 1972. He was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, and joined the Fukuda faction. He has since been re-elected ten times. In 1992 he became Minister of Posts and Telecommunications under the government of Kiichi Miyazawa. He was three times Minister of Health and welfare under the government of Noboru Takeshita, Sosuke Uno and Ryutaro Hashimoto. He gained his first senior post in 1979 as Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Finance and his first ministerial post in 1988 as Minister of Health and Welfare under Noboru Takeshita. He had cabinet posts again in 1992 and 1996–1998. In 1994, with the LDP in opposition, he became part of a new LDP faction, Shinseiki, made up of younger and more motivated parliamentarians.He competed for the presidency of the LDP in September 1995 and July 1999, but he gained little support losing decisively to Ryutaro Hashimoto and then Keizo Obuchi. In April 2000 Obuchi was replaced by Yoshiro Mori after falling seriously ill. Koizumi became leader of his party on his third attempt on April 24, 2001. He had 298 votes, while his closest rival, Ryutaro Hashimoto gained 155 votes. Koizumi won because local chapters were allowed to vote in addition to Diet members. He was made Prime Minister on April 26, 2001. His coalition secured 78 of 121 seats in the Upper House elections in July.
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