Monday's start of the ordinary Diet session renews Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's scrum with vested-interest Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and bureaucrats as he pushes through a watered-down plan to privatize four heavily indebted expressway firms.
The government plans to submit a set of bills in March to privatize the corporations in fiscal 2005. Koizumi hopes part of the package will lead the privatized entities to clear off their 40 trillion yen in accumulated debt in 45 years.
But instead of following the repayment focus of his reform panel, the plan largely favors completion of a costly, and contentious, 9,342-km expressway network.