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. 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. The DRP is composed entirely of lawmakers whose roots are with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and joined the CRA when it was formed in January between the CDP and Komeito. Ogawa also headed the CRA.
But he and the other DRP members did not formally dissolve the CRA, electing to allow it to continue with one member so that it would be eligible to receive over ¥1.1 billion (about $6.9 million) in political party subsidies provided by the national government. Ogawa defended the move as necessary in order to help settle unpaid expenses the CRA incurred in the February general election. Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, says the public is not buying that explanation.
He cites three basic reasons for the DRP’s lack of popularity. Second, the public doesn’t understand why the DRP members couldn’t have remained in the CRA if they were going to continue to work together,” he says. Finally, the decision to not dissolve but keep the CRA in existence and use the money it will still receive in order to pay off debts, though legal, has created confusion and frustration among voters that is reflected in the low support ratings.
Japan’s political party subsidy system is designed to provide established political parties with funds that are to be used for conducting election campaigns and maintaining their organizations. Parties receiving the funds must have five or more parliamentary members, or have parliamentary members and received 2% or more of the vote in the Lower House election or 2% of the votes in at least one of the previous two Upper House elections. As a result, if a political party continues to exist as a legal entity, it can still receive the remainder of its annual subsidy even if most of the parliamentarians have left,” Kamikubo said.
In addition to Ogawa as DRP head, Takeshi Shina is the secretary-general, Yuichi Goto is the parliamentary affairs chief, and Takayuki Ochiai is the head of the policy research council. Once parliament opens, the DRP will work with the one remaining member of the CRA, So Watanabe, as well as former CRA members who returned to Komeito as part of a unified opposition block in parliament, where the LDP has a two-thirds majority in the Lower House but lacks a majority with coalition partner the Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai) in the Upper House.
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