With a sagging approval rating, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party of Japan may be hoping for a turnaround with the second round of screening of costly government-backed entities that starts April 23.
When the first project screening took place last November, it attracted tremendous public attention because each step of the process was publicized for the first time. The goal was to weed out costly, publicly funded entities and projects deemed excessive or outright unnecessary.
The second round will target independent administrative institutions ("dokuritsu gyosei hojin") and public interest corporations ("koeki hojin") — organizations about which the general public has little knowledge. Many such bodies allegedly serve as lucrative job havens for retired bureaucrats, can be monopolistic in nature and thus exempt from any price competition, and are sometimes even a source of corruption.