The new party's principles overlap in several cases with those of Labor and Likud.
But does the future also have a place for Mr Manning as the new party's leader?
But most of the members seem to want a fresh leader for the new party.
If they do, Abdullah Gul, a calm and popular Virtue deputy, may take up the new party's reins.
Although MPs elect the shadow cabinet, the new party leader will decide which jobs the successful candidates get.
India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has elected veteran politician Rajnath Singh as the new party president.
The Alliance for Austria's Future, as the new party is called, has adopted the colour orange from Ukraine's revolution.
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The new party, called the Conservative Party of Canada, faces an uphill struggle.
Barely a month after he heralded the new party, say the opinion polls, more than 10% of Italians back it.
Others feel the new party chair should be an appealing communicator who can go head-to-head with Democrats on TV and radio.
If the merger does go ahead, who will lead the new party?
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Republicans, he said, have strayed too far from the ideals of Ronald Reagan and supplanted Democrats as the new party of big government.
South African political commentator Justice Malala told the local Mail and Guardian newspaper that he doubted the new party would threaten the ANC's power.
The Labor party, like Lapid, stressed domestic problems while the new party Hatnua, led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni focused on peace talks.
Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and even Meghan McCain have had their say along with the new party chairman, Michael Steele.
Whilst the New Party will want to position itself as the party of those who consider themselves "Northern Irish", others, such as Alliance, will contest that territory.
It is expected that her allies will follow her into the new party, but so far no other major politician has announced that they intend to join.
The new party's initial successes were all in the proportional representation elections for the European Parliament - winning its first three seats in 1999 with 7% of the vote.
It notched up about 31, 000 votes, about 1.5% of the vote, and the only consolation for the new party leadership was that Solidarity's vote dwarfed that of the SSP.
That is a common, though not unanimous, sentiment in Germany - but that does not mean Germans will vote in droves for the new party in the federal elections in September.
Two of the three main candidates to lead the new party are from Alberta: Preston Manning, who founded Reform in 1987, and Stockwell Day, a former finance minister in the province.
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Like the DA, the new party, with a bishop as its presidential candidate, likes to present itself as morally upright, with a commitment to rooting out corruption and upholding the constitution.
For months Mr. Hatoyama Yukio, currently a leader of the New Party Sakigake, and Minister Kan have talked about forming a new party, but it is still just that, so much talk.
What the new party may do, though, is to skim votes from Mrs Merkel's CDU and its allies in government, so making it easier for the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens to form a government.
Japanese political parties (Your Party, the Japan Restoration Party, and the New Renaissance Party) are scheduled to announce their intentions today on the confirmation votes for Kuroda to become BoJ governor and for Hiroshi Nakaso and Kikuo Iwata to be named deputy chiefs.
Nominally, Japan's slow moving political realignment has produced a kind of two party system, with the long-entrenched Liberal Democratic Party pitted against the New Frontier Party, which is made up mainly of dissidents from the LDP and the religious-based Komei party.
It will have an even more unwieldy name: the Democratic New Party for the New Millennium.
Gordillo was tossed out of PRI in 2006 and formed her own party, the New Alliance Party, or PANAL. She has since been a staunch adversary to Pena Nieto and made the changes in education law a priority.
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CNNMexico.com could not immediately reach Gordillo's daughter, a senator for the New Alliance party, and the teacher's union had not responded to Gordillo's arrest late Tuesday.
Mihajlovic, head of the New Democracy Party, is the candidate of the DOS reform alliance which won a landslide victory in last month's parliamentary election over Milosevic's Socialists.
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