hankyoreh

Oct.　The two deputy floor leaders were expected to talk about the continuing disagreement over the Lee Myung-bak administration’s Four Major Restoration Project and the revision of Assembly and Demonstration Law. 　(Yonhap News Agency) 　

By Lee Jung-ae

Is the conservative wave of the 2007 presidential and 2008 general elections ebbing away? The major ruling and opposition parties, including the Grand National Party (GNP) and Democratic Party (DP), have put on their blinkers to make a left turn. The GNP, advocating “pro-working class policies,” “centrist pragmatism” and a “fair society,” has recently begun switching the publicized identity of their party from conservative to centrist. In its Oct. 3 convention, the Democratic Party removed “centrist reform” from its platform, where it had been for 15 years, and instead actively pushed a “progressive” line.

There have been sharp signs that the policy coordinates of the GNP, which calls itself a conservative party, are on the move. GNP Supreme Council member Hong Joon-pyo, who heads the party’s special committee for pro-poor policy, brought about a plan that would make banks use 10 percent of their profits for loans to working class people, despite criticism from within and outside his party that this was anti-market. GNP Supreme Council member Chung Doo-un has also called for the Lee Myung-bak administration to do away with tax cuts to the rich.

Also surprising is the transformation of GNP Chairman Ahn Sang-soo, until now considered a party hardliner. Claiming that expanding daycare benefits to 70 percent of families is not enough, Ahn is determined to craft a plan that would see child-rearing payments given out to 70 percent of households. He said the party must establish a philosophy and identity as a centrist conservative party, and composed vision committees to work on the party’s platform and policies.

Lawmaker Na Seong-lin, who has been entrusted with the chairmanship of the committee, said that within the party, there are those who feel the party should go a step beyond “centrist conservatism” to embrace “centrist reform.” He said he would pursue a reformist centrist conservative line with a unified, advanced welfare state as its goal.

Such movements on the part of the GNP, rather than constituting an “ideological left click,” are more like an electoral strategy. They emerged in the context of a rising sense of crisis following the GNP’s defeat in the June 2 local elections this year, after which the party judged that carrying on in the same way would lead to certain defeat in the 2012 general and presidential elections.

The white paper published by the GNP immediately after the June 2 local elections entitled “An Honest Confession for the Sake of a New Start: A Record of Defeat in the 2010 Local Elections and Reflection Upon It,” clearly addresses this point. The paper’s diagnosis is that a “relative sense of deprivation” with regard to improving macroeconomic indices led to votes against the GNP. It also claimed that the existing stereotype of “politically apathetic individuals in their 20s, cynical individuals in their 30s and conservative individuals in their 40s” had been broken at these elections. The solution, it suggested, was listening more attentively to the voices of those in these three age groups, since they were all sensitive to real issues and pragmatic.

GNP Supreme Council member Hong Joon-pyo has also said that the only way for the GNP to survive is through pro-poor policies. One close associate Chairman Ahn Sang-soo said that if the GNP acquired a permanent image as the party of the rich, there was no chance of it coming to power again.

The Democratic Party’s left click is close to a sort of fundamental agonizing over its identity. At its general congress on Oct. 3, it adopted a new second clause to its own party constitution stating that its aims were democracy, human rights, peace, universal welfare and peaceful reunification of the fatherland. The phrase “universal welfare” replaced the existing “welfare administering state.” “Universal welfare” goes a step beyond the party’s existing care-based welfare policies, based on the socially vulnerable, to suggest providing social services that relieve the insecurity of all members of society regarding employment, childcare, health, housing and jobs. This is a qualitatively different concept from the conservative camp’s “residual welfare,” which aims to expand welfare for low-income classes but is nonetheless based upon small government and market principles.

Welfare State Society, a group that advocates for social welfare as a topic for discussion among opposition parties, judged the DP’s clear mentioning of “universal welfare” as something not even found in the doctrine of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the elimination of its policy of centrist reform to be highly significant in its own way.

The DP has also stepped in a progressive direction in terms of its leadership. Supreme council members Chung Dong-young, Lee In-young and Chun Jung-bae, forthright advocates of “progress,” have made socio-economic democratization, including the welfare state and elimination of social disparity, their main priority. Chung Dong-young wants to make the establishment of a tax on the wealthy, a leading policy among progressive parties, a platform of the Democratic Party and is suggesting that it be discussed internally. Even party leader Sohn Hak-kyu, who clamors about embracing centrism being the only way to get elected, said at a press conference immediately after becoming leader that the party would have to accomplish “progressive tasks” in the realm of specific life politics.

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