Major Opposition DPFP Expels Yunoki

August 23, 2018

Tokyo- The major Japanese opposition Democratic Party for the People decided Wednesday to expel immediately Michiyoshi Yunoki, who submitted a letter of resignation to the party earlier in the day.

The DPFP refused to accept his resignation, regarding the move as a serious antiparty act that disrupts party unity.

After submitting his resignation, Yunoki told a press conference, "I no longer can live up to the (party's) policy to complement (the ruling camp) by changing my political beliefs."

The lawmaker of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, said he plans to remain an independent for the time being and aims to cooperate with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, another major opposition party, and a Lower House group mainly consisting of independent lawmakers who used to belong to the Democratic Party, one of the predecessors of the DPFP.

Yunoki criticized the DPFP's decision to tolerate the ruling camp's drive to put controversial work style reform legislation to a vote in a parliamentary session that ran through last month, saying it accelerated the fragmentation of the opposition camp.

He is the first defector from the DPFP since the party was created in May this year through a merger of two opposition parties--the DP and the Party of Hope.

The merger was intended to reunite DP-linked forces that split ahead of the October 2017 Lower House election. The Party of Hope includes DP defectors.

On Wednesday, Lower House lawmaker Keisuke Tsumura, 46, and DPFP coleader Yuichiro Tamaki, a 49-year-old Lower House lawmaker, filed their candidacies for the party's first election to pick its leader.

The new leader, to be elected at a party convention on Sept. 4, will serve a three-year term.

DPFP coleader Kohei Otsuka will support Tamaki, instead of running in the election himself. Jiji Press