POLITICS-JAPAN: Koizumi’s Popularity under Tough Test

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 8 2002 (IPS) - The popularity wave that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rode since he came to power last year is now being put to the test, amid growing perceptions that he has yet to deliver on his pledge to bring much-needed reforms to the country.

“Ten months into power, the public, Koizumi’s main support base, is getting impatient. The prime minister faces tough times ahead,” contends Professor Yukio Akatsu, who teaches international relations at Chubu University.

Aware of his fast-fading prestige, Koizumi lashed out in Parliament on Wednesday, saying, ” No matter low the support ratings will go, my pledge on reforms will not be shaken.”

But analysts are not falling for the bold words of Koizumi, who took office in April 2001, and say his political standing may in fact be in peril.

Toro Hayano, a senior political commentator from the Asahi newspaper, a leading daily, predicts an early dismissal of the Japanese parliament depending on the power dynamics in the current coalition government.

The coalition government comprises Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party and the two smaller parties, the New Komeito and the Conservative Party.

Both smaller parties never supported Koizumi’s reform package aimed at changing systemic political and economic problems. They could get together with anti-Koizumi forces in the ruling LDP and force a showdown, says Hayano.

Kiyoshi Kobayashi, another political writer from the Asahi newspaper, suggests that the crucial turning point for the embattled premier could come be as early as April, the start of Japan’s new fiscal year.

The political events in the future all depends on whether there is a definite improvement in the lacklustre economy, which is not likely, he says.

Koizumi’s reform credentials have come under fire in recent weeks. Last week, Koizumi fired popular Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, along with a senior bureaucrat in the foreign office, a move that proved to be the catalyst for the sudden slump in public support for him.

His approval ratings are down to 47 percent from a high of 74 percent at the start of January, according to a ‘Yomuiri Shimbun’ newspaper survey conducted last week.

But political experts point out that the dip in Koizumi’s poliitcal standing cannot be solely blamed on Tanaka’s dismissal.

While people were upset with Koizumi for his decision, the core of public resentment lies in Koizumi’s inability to turn the economy around through reforms in the old system, points out an editorial in the ‘Yomuiri’ newspaper, Japan’s largest daily, on Sunday.

Tanaka’s huge appeal was based on her attempt to reform the corrupt foreign ministry.

She won the public through her reshuffling of top bureaucrats and her vociferous campaign to make transparent a slush fund. On Tuesday, a breakdown of the controversial fund was finally made public and showed that more than 2,000 staff members had misused money over several years.

Against this backdrop, Koizumi’s decision to fire both her and the vice foreign minister, who was involved in a high-profile dispute and seen as a symbol of the old guard, disappointed the public.

When he became prime minister, Koizumi pledged to tackle “sacred cows”, referring to vested bureaucratic and political interests that were seen as preventing Japan from recovering from its longest post-war recession.

Richard Werner of Sophia University here says that Koizumi has avoided important reforms to clean the problem of bad debts, such as creating a bad-debt purchasing company funded by the Bank of Japan, or reintroducing government-guaranteed bank loans for small and medium-sized companies, which worked well in the nineties.

“With nothing of this sort happening, even Koizumi’s closes advisers are now losing their patience,” he adds.

Despite a new, second supplementary budget of 18 billion U.S. dollars, which was passed last week in the Diet or Parliament and which included special package to create new jobs, the ‘Yomuiri’ poll shows that two-thirds of respondents are worried about the worsening economy.

They were also not confident that the current Cabinet could turn the situation around.

The Cabinet forecasts that Japan’s GDP will post zero growth this year, which represents a further decline from the 0.9 percent growth for 2001. This year, growth may hover at 0.6 percent.

A poorly performing stock market — the benchmark is at the 9,500 mark this week or below the 10,000 mark for the first time since October — and a weak yen against the U.S. dollar show little sign of economic improvement.

The yen hovered at 133 to the dollar this week, down more than 20 percent from late last year.

The survey also cited rising unemployment as a result of rampant corporate restructuring as yet a pressing concern. The jobless rate hit another post-war high of 5.6 percent in December.

Another sore point for Koizumi is his new health care plan, to be passed next month. The new plan, under a streamlining plan for efficiency, would force patients to pay up to 30 percent of their medical bills, a dramatic rise from the earlier 10 percent.

“Koizumi has not brought reform but only hardship to the people,” says Mizuho Fukushima, a popular lawmaker with the opposition Social Democrat Party.

The rapid dwindling of public support, which was Koizumi’s power base, could now make him an easy target for the strong traditional politicians in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party who have long wanted to him ousted from power.

Kobayashi the says jostling for power following Koizumi’s weakening political standing will bring to the forefront old LDP hands such as former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, the main opponent of Koizumi for the premiership and a rival who has been waiting in the sidelines.

So far, political watchers say there is no clear sign of a plot to oust Koizumi, one that would signal a struggle in the powerful LDP to find a ‘suitable’ successor to the prime miniser. But this may not the case for too long.