Just as he indicated he would do before Monday's Cabinet reshuffle, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi filled major party-executive posts and Cabinet posts with politicians loyal to his postal-reform policy. Prior to the naming of the new Cabinet lineup, Mr. Koizumi appointed Mr. Tsutomu Takebe, a former farm minister and avowed advocate of postal-system privatization, to succeed Mr. Shinzo Abe as secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party.

In the administration of Mr. Koizumi, Mr. Takebe's assumption of the party's No. 2 post bears far greater importance than the appointment to a Cabinet portfolio directly related to postal reforms. Mr. Takebe is known as a staunch advocate of Mr. Koizumi's reform initiatives. Belonging to a comparatively small intraparty faction headed by Mr. Taku Yamasaki, a former LDP secretary general who lost in last year's general election, Mr. Takebe is relatively unknown to outsiders of the political world and has yet to test his true political abilities. As a minority Liberal Democrat who favors postal-services privatization, however, he played a central role in working out the LDP's "manifesto" for last year's Lower House election.

Commitment to Mr. Koizumi's postal-services reforms is also believed to have determined Mr. Kaoru Yosano's appointment as chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council. It is exceptional that a politician unaffiliated with any intraparty group in the LDP will be serving in one of the party's three executive posts. These two appointments apparently represent Mr. Koizumi's determination to carry out his long-cherished goal of privatizing postal services.