Former PQ cabinet minister Camille Laurin was chosen as its first president on an interim basis, while other important members and supporters included Gilbert Paquette and Jacques Parizeau.
Some RDI members wanted the movement to become a full-fledged political party, while others, including Parizeau, regarded it as simply a temporary organization for supporters of Quebec independence.
[1] The RDI held its official founding convention at the end of March 1985 and chose former PQ cabinet minister Denise Leblanc-Bantey as its full-time president.
[6] Notwithstanding Parizeau's comments, two hundred delegates to a June 1986 RDI convention in Montreal voted almost unanimously to turn the movement into a party.
New president Lyne Marcoux said that the RDI would no longer "play a phantom role in politics" and would hold negotiations with other sovereigntist organizations.