TOKYO • The chief of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) , Ms Renho, resigned yesterday after only 10 months into the job, as the party’s support ratings remain rooted in the single digits..
TOKYO • The chief of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) , Ms Renho, resigned yesterday after only 10 months into the job, as the party’s support ratings remain rooted in the single digits.
As leader, she would have been the de facto pick as prime minister if the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is toppled from power in the next Lower House election, due by December next year.
Ms Renho, who goes by one name, is an Upper House lawmaker, but she said only on Tuesday that she intends to contest the Lower House poll.
Yesterday, she said she realised her shortcomings after thinking about what needed to be done to « urge the public to think of us as a party they can trust ».
Her resignation came just two days after her second-in-command Yoshihiko Noda quit.
The DP, in its former incarnation, was in power from 2009 to 2012, coinciding with the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
But it lost the public’s trust in its opaque handling of the crisis and other issues, such as its inability to pull the economy out of its slump.
