Members of Japan's upper house vote on the postal reform bills advocated by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Aug. 8, 2005. Koizumi dissolved the lower house Monday after the postal reform bills advocated by him failed to clear the upper house.

    TOKYO, Aug. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Japan's upper house voted down Monday the postal reform bills advocated by its premier.

    Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said that he would dissolve the lower house if his pet bills fail to clear the House of Councilors. Japan's prime minister can not dismiss the upper house.

    The bills were vetoed in the upper house plenary session 125 against 108. They were approved by the lower house on July 5 by a slight margin of five votes.

    Privatizing Japan's postal services has been one of Koizumi's core policies. Under the plan, the mammoth body with some 270,000 employees will be split into four units to be run under a holding company from April 2007, and become fully privatized entities in 10 years. He intends to spin off these public servant to relieve the government of financial burden.

    However, his ambition has met vehement resistance, not only from the opposition parties, but also from his own ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

    The postal service system is one of the major supporting groupsfor the party, thus has strong clout there.

    They are worried that the privatization would deprive them of stable payments and job posts. Opponents also argued that the privatization could result in the closure of the bulk of post offices, particularly in rural, depopulated areas where many LDP supporters reside.

    The major opposition Domestic Party of Japan is opposed to the government-proposed privatization on the grounds that it might result in the creation of a massive government-affiliated conglomerate offering postal, financial, distribution and retail services that would weigh heavily on their respective private-sector competitors.

    In order to gain over party opponents, Koizumi even threatened to dismiss the lower house and call a snap general election. In such case, the ruling party could encounter a tough war as the DPJhad demonstrated a rapid growth in political strength in the previous lower house election in 2003 and the upper house electionlast year.

    The LDP executives have kicked out some senior disobedient members from their posts after the lower house voted on the bills,and warned that the opponents would not get party endorsement if asnap general election really comes. Enditem