The Democratic Reform Party (DRP),?created last week by parliamentarians who left the Centrist Reform Alliance?(CRA), held its first meeting Thursday with 18 members, announcing its leadership lineup ahead of the autumn session of parliament, expected to begin Oct. 5.
“We would like to get off to a practical start. Although we’re only a small elite group, we earnestly ask for everyone’s participation in various forms but united in spirit,” DRP head Junya Ogawa said Thursday.
But the party is off to a bad start and faces an uphill battle to win over a skeptical public. Media polls last week in the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Nikkei showed its support rate at zero percent, and the DRP faces criticism that its members decided not to dissolve the CRA in order to continue receiving political party subsidies.
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