Political parties of the Empire of Japan public assembly, the press and on political discussion. The Meiji government had come to power by an elite of "samurai" from certain clans ("hanbatsu") and the "genrō" felt threatened by anything looking ever remotely like republicanism or democracy. During this period, Itagaki Taisuke and Ōkuma Shigenobu were leading figures in the legitimization of political parties. Itagaki created Japan's first political party, the Aikoku Kōtō, in 1873 in Tokyo to petition for an elected assembly, and a similar regional party based in Osaka, the Aikokusha. These groups were the basis of the Jiyutō (Liberal Party), founded in 1881 as Japan’s first
Idea (political party) in 2001 as the Alliance of the New Citizen (ANO, which means YES in Slovak). It was the first modern political party in Slovakia to consider itself to be a liberal political party. Its leader Pavol Rusko was also the founder and former owner of Markíza (the biggest commercial TV channel in Slovakia). Rusko at first thought to join the Party of Civic Understanding (SOP) which was part of the previous government, yet after some bad blood, around January 2001 Rusko decided to create a new political party. In August 2002, Pavol Rusko claimed that the party is financed completely