Shanghai Star. 2002-04-18

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, wearing a suit with woven-in reflective material, rides a bicycle in front of Japanese schoolchildren at a government-sponsored traffic safety campaign event at a Tokyo elementary school on April 9. Koizumi visited the school to talk to children about the importance of traffic safety.

"The most likely scenario is that he stays and achieves very little for at least another year, year-and-a-half"

TOKYO - Glossy posters with his photo still hang proudly at the ruling party kiosk and a raft of items from mobile phone straps to coffee mugs bearing the image of Japan's once-wildly popular prime minister are still on sale.

But one year after Junichiro Koizumi staged a stunning victory over old guard rivals in the Liberal Democratic Party, the lines of adoring fans jostling to snap up the posters, pre-paid telephone cards, CDs and videos are a distant dream.

"Do you have any Obuchi phone cards?" asked the lone customer sighted at the shop at LDP headquarters earlier this week.

Told there were none featuring the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, an avuncular leader who suffered a stroke while in office two years ago, the 28-year-old civil servant settled for Koizumi.

Twelve months after the maverick politician with his mane of silver hair sprang to power pledging to free the LDP from entrenched interests and implement painful economic reforms, Koizumi has lost his superstar lustre.

Doubts over his commitment to economic reform, the sacking in January of his popular foreign minister and scandals in the LDP have slashed Koizumi's opinion poll ratings to below 50 per cent from the heady 90 per cent of his early days in office.

With no party leadership race required until September 2003 and no general election mandated until mid-2004, Koizumi seems likely, though hardly guaranteed, to keep his job for a while.

But the slump in popularity deprives him of his main weapon against LDP anti-reformers, dimming prospects for change.

It also weakens his oft-made threat to call an election if rivals block his agenda and makes it less likely he can attract support from opposition lawmakers who share his views on reform.

"The most likely scenario is that he stays and achieves very little for at least another year, year-and-a-half," said Columbia University political scientist Gerald Curtis. "The chances are that he, like the country, will muddle through."

Short of successes

Expectations that party veteran Koizumi would slash the ties that bind the LDP to a powerful cluster of farmers, big business and small shopkeepers and have kept it from adapting policies to changing economic realities were probably always overdone.

But a dwindling band of reform-minded supporters say the prime minister does have some successes to his credit.

Admirers cite his adherence, with a few accounting fiddles here and there, to a pledge to cap new government bond issues at 30 trillion yen ($228.8 billion) a year.

His goal: to rein in Japan's government debt, now at nearly 140 per cent of gross domestic product, and to stem the public works spending that has for decades nurtured his rivals' regional power bases.

"Somehow he has capped the money available for the old guard and made it clear that his intention is public sector reform," said Takashi Kiuchi, an economic adviser to Shinsei Bank.

"He wants to stay in power to ensure the destruction of the unholy alliance between pork-barrel politics and those protected in various industries," Kiuchi added.

Koizumi has also struggled to prise control over policy away from LDP barons and hand it to his cabinet, with limited success.

"Things are happening in the political system, but at a much slower pace," said one Western political analyst.

"Moving some aspects of decision-making from the party to the cabinet was significant, but this ran into tremendous opposition and seems to be stalled," he added.

Rivals and threats

Koizumi's falling popularity makes him vulnerable to attempted coups by LDP rivals and fresh evidence from two parliamentary by elections late this month that his electoral magic has evaporated would further his enemies' cause.

An opinion poll this week suggested that support for Koizumi might have hit bottom at around 40 per cent, but any such predictions are shaky, especially with fresh scandals brewing.

"There will be a lot more scandals over the next 12 months," the Western analyst said.

"Virtually any member of parliament can be nailed."

Increasingly, voters say they back Koizumi mainly because the alternatives - whether in the LDP or the opposition - are even less attractive.

"Koizumi may be weaker, but he will hang on longer," said Shigenori Okazaki, a political analyst at USB Warburg.

"There is no replacement."

(Agencies via Xinhua)