hankyoreh

April 27. (by Kang Chang-gwang

By Kim Bo-hyup, staff writer

The Democratic United Party (DUP) wants to win the presidential election in December. All its members can agree on that goal, but views on how to accomplish it vary widely.

Two of the party’s top strategists, former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan and lawmaker Park Jie-won, are like night and day. Of the two men competing for the party’s chairmanship, one, Lee, agreed to run in that election, while the other, Park, is to run for the position of floor leader. Now, DUP members are expressing different views on whether this will actually help the party’s chances of a presidential election victory.

Both Lee’s and Park’s camps believe the agreement will help. Speaking in a radio broadcast Friday, Park said, “Are we going to go on forever upsetting South Koreans with divisions between the Roh Moo-hyun wing and the non-Roh wing, or the Honam wing and the non-Honam wing? I came to the conclusion that this is the right path for me to bring about a change in administrations. My belief is that people are prepared to give the national leadership to our party, and we’re the ones who aren‘t prepared.”

Kim Hyun, who was elected as a proportional representative in April’s general election, said, “Looking at the major political timetable through the end of this year, this alliance between two men with experience and know-how from guiding us to victory in the 2002 presidential election is the most powerful card the DUP can play right now.”

Park, a former DP floor leader, is viewed as the best candidate hold down the administration and ruling party in the 19th National Assembly, which holds its first session next month. Lee, for his part, is seen as ideal for keeping the party under stable control amid a complex state of affairs, given the potential for a candidate consolidation race involving the DUP’s choice, the United Progressive Party’s selection, and possibly Ahn Chul-soo, a software tycoon with unequaled appeal among voters aged between 20 and 40.

But experience and stability can also appear stale and boring. The contrasting principles here are novelty and dynamism. Some DUP members have determined that the political agreement by the two crafty lawmakers is little different from the conspiring between conglomerates and corporations, and that it will not help the party‘s chances of a presidential victory due to the loss of dynamism over the course of various party elections. This year, the DUP will hold the floor leader contest on May 4, the June 9 convention to decide the party chairperson and leadership, and the presidential candidate selection in July or August. If the outcome appears preordained, the contests could fail to generate much interest or attention.

Speaking at a DUP supreme council meeting Friday, member Lee In-young said, “We need a powerful alliance to win the presidency, but it has to be an alliance of values, not power. For us to get past the divisions of the Roh Moo-hyun wing and the non-Roh wing, or the Honam wing and the non-Honam wing, we need to be able to resolve issues through a dynamic process with a newfound unity that is centered on values.

"I don’t think the DUP is going to come to power simply through a new version of the 1997 Honam/Chungcheong framework or the 2002 Yeongnam candidate," Lee continued. "It doesn’t appear that the path to a presidential election victory in December is guaranteed if we reconstruct the same framework with the same figures."

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