Finally the stage has been set for the privatization of the debt-ridden highway corporations. The government plans to send related bills to the next Diet session, which opens in January. If the package is approved as scheduled, a new tollway system will go into operation in fiscal 2005 under the management of privatized companies. However, the road ahead appears littered with potholes -- figuratively, that is.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the chief promoter of privatization, should have little cause to rejoice. The agreement reached earlier this week between the government and the ruling coalition represents, at best, a halfway compromise that shortcuts the central recommendation of his blue-ribbon advisory panel: Toll revenues should be used mainly to pay back debt, not to build more roads.

Two panelists, including the acting chairman, have resigned in protest of the agreement -- a move that amounts to a vote of no confidence for Mr. Koizumi's highway reform. The chairman quit last December when the panel submitted a final report to the prime minister. The group started out with seven members, all of them appointed by Mr. Koizumi, in June 2002. Now, with only three active members remaining, it exists all except in name.