National News

Takenaka, Kawaguchi retain posts after Koizumi reshuffles Cabinet

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi retained Financial Services Minister Heizo Takenaka and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi after reshuffling his Cabinet on Sept. 22, defying calls for their ouster from within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Apparently feeling bullish after his sweeping victory in the LDP presidential election two days earlier, Koizumi kept Takenaka, seen as a symbol of the prime minister's economic reform drive, despite mounting demands from LDP veterans that the private sector economist - a champion of austere fiscal policy and tough bank inspections - be replaced.

Takenaka will continue concurrently serving as financial services minister and economic and fiscal policy minister, two posts he has held since September, in the new 17-member Cabinet.

It had been widely speculated that Koizumi would strip Takenaka of one of the two Cabinet posts in a compromise with LDP lawmakers who backed Koizumi in his re-election bid despite differences over policy.

Koizumi also rejected a call by many LDP lawmakers to replace Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former trade ministry bureaucrat who does not hold a Diet seat.

Kawaguchi has been the target of attacks from LDP veterans who want more Cabinet posts to go to Diet members. Koizumi apparently kept her on because the nation is facing difficult diplomatic issues related to North Korea and the planned dispatch of Self-Defense Forces to take part in the reconstruction of Iraq.

The key economic portfolio of finance minister went to Sadakazu Tanigaki, who was in charge of industrial revitalization in the previous Cabinet.

The lineup "is meant to show the nation that the policy direction of the Koizumi administration has not changed," the prime minister said triumphantly.

Shukan ST: Oct. 3, 2003

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