BRUSSELS -- Despite the initial popularity and purported radicalism of Japan's new prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, there is no evidence yet to show he has the vision or the ability to pull the country out of its economic slump and carry through the reforms necessary to meet the regional and global challenges ahead, according to European analysts.
Koizumi's suggestions that the Japanese economy might need to go back into recession under the weight of aggressive pro-market structural reforms and the shock medicine of fiscal retrenchment have raised eyebrows. But that has been tempered by fears about his decision to focus not so much on banks as on less urgent reform of the postal savings system. And, Japan-watchers stress, it is to early to tell whether the new leader will be able to deliver on promises, as he has a patchy track record and will have to steer his program through the notorious back-scratching factions of LDP politics.
As minister of posts and telecommunications in 1992, he was unable to push through his long-held dream of privatizing the postal savings system. And although hailed as a reformer, he has risen to the top of the Liberal Democratic Party by adhering closely to rules set down by the party's conservative elite, and he is on the record as being a fan of the factional political system.