You would think the man had never heard of lame ducks. Fewer than nine months before Junichiro Koizumi is due to quit as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and so as prime minister, his bandwagon keeps rolling. Last week, giving his policy speech at the annual opening of the Diet for the last time, he promised an agenda full of reform. The intention this session, he said, is to revamp welfare and pension schemes, to shrink the number of civil servants, to decentralise government to newly revamped localities, to start privatising public services and to privatise or consolidate eight government-linked financial institutions.
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