Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's two-month-old administration stands at the crossroads of how to implement the reform agenda inherited from the previous government of Junichiro Koizumi.
There are two problems: return to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of lawmakers who were expelled from the party for voting against Koizumi's postal liberalization bills, and resistance in the ruling coalition to Abe's plan to make road-specific tax revenues available for general purposes.
LDP executives decided Dec. 4 to reinstate 11 Lower House members who were forced to leave the party for opposing postal privatization.