Political insiders have begun suspecting that Ichiro Ozawa may be losing his grip on the Democratic Party of Japan after a head-on collision between the DPJ and the governing coalition was averted during 11th-hour mediation by the Lower House speaker and the Upper House president.

The crux of the mediation matter was the additional provisional tax imposed on gasoline under a law due to expire at the end of March. Intent on keeping the high tax rate to build roads, the coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito had drafted a bill that would have maintained the additional tax until the end of May, hoping that by that time the Diet would have passed the fiscal 2008 tax-code bill extending the additional tax another 10 years.

As the opposition group, led by Ozawa's DPJ, was determined to lower the gasoline tax, the two sides appeared headed for a collision course. But the joint mediation by Speaker Yohei Kono and President Satsuki Eda was accepted by both the governing coalition and the opposition camp, and eliminated the possibility of Ozawa forcing Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to call general elections.