Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday he would complete the rest of his term to September, 2006, but wanted to step down then if his economic reforms were completed.
"I must grit my teeth and battle on for another two years. When the reforms I have aimed at are realized, my duty will be completed and at that time I want to be liberated from the post of prime minister as soon as possible," he wrote in an e-mail magazine published yesterday.
Koizumi took office in April, 2001, pledging bold reforms that were anathema to many of his own party's old guard.
Analysts say his performance has been patchy as regards his main goals of privatization, fixing the troubled banking sector and deregulating the economy, where a long-awaited recovery is now under way.
The rules of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ban a party president from seeking a third term, but exceptions have been made in the past and there has been speculation that Koizumi might be allowed an extra, if brief, third term since there is no obvious successor in the party at the moment.
The LDP president would be virtually assured the premiership as long as the ruling coalition that the party leads keeps its majority in parliament's lower house. No election for that chamber is scheduled until 2007.
In an opinion poll published by business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun on Monday, support for his Cabinet was at 48 percent, unchanged from a poll conducted in February.
That is a far cry from the stratospheric 90 percent seen when he first took office, but still high for a Japanese leader this far into his term.
"It would certainly be easy to abandon my responsibilities and quit. But I became prime minister with the support of many people and I want to carry on with these reforms," Koizumi said.
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