hankyoreh

These days the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy’s Kim Min-yeong has a lot to think about. Mainly that would be how to put together the kind of framework to sustain the forum linking political parties, civic groups, and prominent activists together in the “Conference for Overcoming the Economic and People’s Welfare Crisis” launched on Thursday.

“It would be best if, within the framework of solidarity, we could have a structure for good faith competition,” he said. Easier said than done. Progressives are people who live and die by the moral justifications for their actions.

It has taken a long time for the word “solidarity” (yeondae) to emerge again after progressives were defeated in last year’s presidential election and this year’s National Assembly election. Civic and activist groups were harshly critical of the Democratic Party, which gave the conservatives the presidency by five million votes. The Democratic Labor Party and New Progressive Party have also been criticized for splitting right ahead of the National Assembly election.

Then, on September 24, some fifty prominent figures in civil society got together for some post-game contemplation of the “candlelight protests,” at which time they proposed a “wise approach that does not neglect the potential of political parties and realistic values.” Later, when the Congress for the People’s Welfare and Democracy was formed, it was proposed that there be a format for solidarity “among the many political forces.” Democratic Labor Party Chairman Kang Ki-kap, during his address at the start of the new National Assembly session, proposed the creation of an “anti-Lee Myung-bak alliance.”

Former President Kim Dae-jung got involved when he made a most political proposal, that the Democratic Party and progressive parties and groups in civil society form a “democratic union,” a term once used during the dictatorship years to refer to an umbrella for a wide range of pro-democratic groups.

While this idea of a new democratic union exists only as a concept, it is a highly political one that goes beyond just being an “anti-Lee Myung-bak policy alliance.” Within the Democratic Party there are a lot of calls lately for a “joint candidate selection” process that would involve political negotiations among “significant political forces,” including the Democratic Labor and New Progressive Parties. This thinking goes so far as to suggest the Democrats yield to the New Progressives and let them be the only of the two parties that fields a candidate for important posts like the mayor of Seoul or the governor of Gyeonggi Province. “I got 30 percent of the vote and the Democratic Labor Party candidate got 10 percent,” said one Democratic Party official who ran in April’s National Assembly election. “If we don’t unify our candidates in the next election it will be impossible to beat” the ruling Grand National Party.

At any rate, President Kim’s comment ended up having the effect of complicating the talk about solidarity going on among progressive parties and in civil society. The Democratic Labor Party is calling a meeting of its supreme council and Assembly members and a meeting of its party executives to decide on a position on the “democratic union” idea. Democratic Labor Party spokesman Park Seung-hup said that the “momentum of the discussion” about political solidarity will pick up pace “if the Democratic Party reflects on its position about neoliberalism and the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.”

The New Progressive Party is expressing a willingness to participate in a policy union that is temporary, but is strongly against anything more, like the “democratic union” referred to by President Kim. “A policy union or ‘joint candidate selection process’ without an answer to neoliberalism is meaningless,” said New Progressive Party spokesperson Lee Ji-an. The fact that the New Progressives are still putting their formal party structure in place also appears to be limiting their flexibility.

A heated debate went on at the citizen journalism Web site Ohmynews on Friday. Roh Hoe-chan, joint chairman of the New Progressive Party, said that when all is said and done, “talking about a ‘democratic union’ is really talk about strengthening the Democratic Party.” Novelist Kim Kap-su demanded to know “what Son Ho-cheol and Chin Jung-kwon want to do instead.” The two prominent intellectuals have both said they oppose the idea of a “democratic union.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]