Japan politics fever chilled but reform hopes burn

Japan's World Cup ecstasy was a flash of cheer for a country down in the dumps for a decade, but the rapid chilling seems all too familiar to those who recall the "Koizumi fever" which raised voters' hopes this time last year.

Then, screaming school girls as well as stodgier voting-aged citizens of both sexes thronged the streets for a glimpse of lion-maned Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as he touted his platform of economic and political reform on the campaign trail.

This month, joyous crowds of Japanese danced, embraced and partied to mark the victories of a national soccer squad some had feared would become the first World Cup host team to suffer an early exit from the tournament.

The football flirtation, though, is already cooling in this country where baseball is king, while doubts about Koizumi's reform credentials have sliced his public support ratings to less than half the 80-90 percent he once enjoyed.

But pushing the comparison too far, pundits say, ignores one basic fact: many Japanese voters want their sclerotic political establishment to change and will likely shift allegiance elsewhere if they abandon hope that Koizumi can deliver.

"People got quite excited about Koizumi and even about (former Prime Minister Ryutaro) Hashimoto...There is a difference in degree, but it's the same phenomenon," said Steven Reed, a political science professor at Chuo University in Tokyo.

"It was a hope for change and that they were finally going to get some leadership," he added. "That is still there, it didn't go away. It's waiting for someone to light it up again."

Koizumi says he is still fighting the good fight for his agenda to clean up the nation's bad loan-laden banks, rein in a ballooning public debt already the worst among advanced nations, and free the economy from government's heavy hand.

"I've received harsh criticism from opposition parties...but I stated that my stance on reforms has not wavered," Koizumi told a news conference in Calgary, Canada after a Group of Eight summit.

Haruo Shimada, a Keio University economics professor who advises Koizumi, also insists that critics who charge the prime minister is now a prisoner of the very ruling party anti-reformers he had vowed to fight are missing the mark.

High on the list of achievements, Shimada said, is Koizumi's refusal to revive the bloated pork-barrel spending which has left Japan with public debt worth more than 130 percent of gross and his success in shifting scarce tax revenues to key sectors.

But Shimada had some harsh words for Koizumi on other fronts. "On the policy side, I am not giving him high grades in two areas," he told Reuters in an interview.

"One is banking policy, the other is tax policy," he said, adding that Japan's financial watchdog should come clean on the extent of the banks' bad loans while tax policy should focus more on incentives and less on simply plugging revenue gaps.

"The prime minister could take a few more steps on these fronts, he could be more powerful and determined," Shimada said.

Japan's political schedule means most voters won't have a chance to deliver a verdict until a cluster of parliamentary by-elections in October, unless consensus predictions are confounded and Koizumi calls a snap poll.

No election for parliament's Lower House is mandated until mid-2004 and few at present expect Koizumi to make good on his early threats to call one sooner if foes in his long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) blocked the path to reform.

"Does Koizumi have the guts to do that? I don't think so, I think he will just muddle along," said Muneyuki Shindo, a political science professor at Rikkyo University.

Defeats for all ruling bloc candidates in five by-elections set for October, however, might trigger moves both inside and outside the LDP to topple Koizumi, analysts said.

In the meantime, moves by potentially key players such as outspoken former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, nationalist Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and Ichiro Ozawa, a one-time LDP baron who heads a small opposition party, will be scrutinised.

But predicting who could replace Koizumi in voters' hearts and minds could prove as tough as it would have been in May to forecast that World Cup Co-host South Korea would make the semi-finals while favoured France went home early and in tears.

"Who will it be? it's not predictable. Simultaneity counts," said Chuo University's Reed, suggesting that an unforeseen convergence of events and personalities in politics spells surprising outcomes. "You can get weird things happening."