Reforms a major challenge for Koizumi

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

TOKYO, AUG. 10. The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Junichiro Koizumi's re-election on Thursday night as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) may allow him to stay in office for two more years, but the tenure will undoubtedly be challenging, if not extremely difficult. Although Mr. Koizumi won the support of the major LDP factions - including the largest one led by the former Prime Minister, Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto, (often called the one-man resistance force to Mr. Koizumi's reform initiatives) - he will face mounting pressure on several domestic issues.

One of them is unemployment, which at the current 4.9 per cent is about the worst since World War II. The situation will probably worsen as Mr. Koizumi puts his economic reforms plans into action. For one, writing off bad debts by banks is expected to put a lot of people out of work.

Already, men and women have been losing their jobs. A journalist with ``The Japan Times'', the leading English-language daily published from Tokyo and Osaka, says that even newspapers have had to retrench staffers. ``I am lucky to have been able to hold on to my job. But I feel guilty that it had been at the cost of some others, and that the layoff had ensured that I enjoy the same level of salary I have been drawing''. He says that an immediate fallout of this could be a rise in petty crime, a feature that Japan has been largely free of. In fact, one can drop one's wallet with wads of currency notes on a crowded city street and expect it to turn up at the ``Lost and Found'' office the following day, its contents intact.

But the journalist admits that reforms are a must, and the accompanying pain a necessary evil. Mr. Koizumi himself has said time and again that ``there cannot be any reform without pain''. As much as the average Japanese citizen will be inclined to face this with some stoicism, he is bound to ask whether better life will follow the suffering. Today, the youth especially is in no mood for a life of sacrifice if that will not ensure greater pleasures - after a comparatively short ``grin-and-bear'' period.

Since the most severe form of pain will be unemployment, the people may be tempted to revolt if the phase continues longer than their level of tolerance. And for the young, this threshold can be dangerously low, a fact that Mr. Koizumi can ignore at the peril of losing his chair.

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Section  : International
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