The Party of Hope is aptly named. Yuriko Koike is hoping the Tokyo voters have a very short memory of all of the many promises that she would spend 100 percent of her time working for Tokyo.
She is hoping that Tokyo voters do not point out that to date she has accomplished nothing that she committed to during her election — not greater transparency as pointed out by the Asahi and Mainichi newspapers, not making the Tokyo Olympics less expensive, not getting any real clarity around the Tsukiji move.
She has to be hoping that Komeito does not choose to walk away from her in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly after she made multiple promises to them to get them to work with her and not their traditional national partner, the LDP.
She has to be hoping that no one dwells on the fact that she made all of those promises and she copyrighted the name of the new national party Kibo no To eight months ago in February.
She has to be hoping that people do not question whether her former party colleague Seiji Maehara was not part of a plot between them for him to take down Renho, win the DP presidential race and then blow it up so the new Koike/Maehara party becomes the immediate largest opposition.
Is she also hoping that the JCP won't declare whole-out war against Kibo no To since Maehara betrayed them? Hope indeed.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.