The top government spokesman made the remarks after the government presented to the Diet earlier in the day its plan to appoint former vice health minister Takeshi Erikawa, who also served as Cabinet Office vice minister, to the post, which drew criticism from opposition parties.

"The government is not just trying to broker (amakudari) but appoint (a bureaucrat)," Tadamori Oshima, secretary general of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, told reporters, saying the latest move constitutes a clear violation of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's election pledge.

The DPJ, which forms the core of the coalition government, pledged in its campaign platform for the general election in August to ban government offices from arranging amakudari jobs for their retiring officials.

Other nonruling parties, such as the New Komeito party and Your Party, also criticized the government for proposing the appointment.

The personnel authority is headed by three commissioners, and the Cabinet's appointments to the post are subject to Diet approval. One of the commissioners is given the role of president, but the top post has been vacant following the resignation of its predecessor, Masahito Tani, in September.

The government has already come under criticism for tapping a former top finance ministry bureaucrat to the post of president at government-owned Japan Post Holdings Co. The opposition says the appointment represented amakudari, or descent from heaven -- the practice of bureaucrats landing often cushy jobs at organizations operating in areas their ministries supervised before they retired from the civil service.

"Criticism doesn't apply (to the proposed appointment of Erikawa)," Hirano told a news conference. "Amakudari doesn't apply."

"The person who grasps the reality of civil servants is the most desirable (choice)," Hirano also said, adding that as a long-time vice minister, Erikawa has rich experience and understands well the current government's intentions with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama poised to implement a drastic reform of the national civil service.

The remaining two commissioners hail from sectors unrelated to the national civil service.

Tani, the authority's former president, resigned just before the Hatoyama government was launched in mid-September, after causing a storm over his opposition to reforming the civil service.

Tani opposed the then Liberal Democratic Party-led government's plan to establish a body that would manage single-handedly the personnel matters of senior bureaucrats at ministries and agencies.