hankyoreh

Apr. 7. On the same day

By Lee Se-young, staff reporter

This may be a strange election. It will be the first election in which the ruling party and the main opposition party are playing by different rules. After President Park Geun-hye rejected the proposal made by the head of the opposition party to discuss her pledge to abolish the party nomination system for local elections, it is becoming more likely that the local elections on June 4 will be matches between single candidates nominated by the ruling party and multiple opposition candidates without party affiliation.

Voters are perplexed. “I’ve never seen an election like this before,” said Jeong Hae-young, 37, who lives in Seoul’s Seocho district. In a district that is dominated by the ruling party, Jeong supports the opposition, voting along party lines in every election. “There’s no way to decide between candidates just by looking at their campaign platforms,” Jeong said. “There was no chance of an opposition candidate becoming the district chief anyway, but now the two or three district council members who are from the opposition are going to be voted out, too. The ruling party will sweep the whole district.”

Time is running out for the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), which finds itself in the awkward position of being the only major party not to nominate local candidates. On Apr. 7, the party held a meeting in the auditorium of the National Assembly library to urge the passage of a law abolishing the party nomination system for local elections, which was attended by about 200 people, including party co-leaders Kim Han-gil and Ahn Cheol-soo, lawmakers with the party, and candidates for local elections.

“I am meeting a lot of people in the provinces, and I am well aware of the difficulties that you are facing on the ground. As one of the leaders of this party, this is truly upsetting,” said Ahn in an attempt to reassure party members. Nevertheless, the NPAD lawmakers, who are sandwiched between the party leaders and the candidates for local elections, continued to argue back and forth.

“Spending our time trying to eliminate party nominations instead of dealing with the big stories of today, such as the National Intelligence Service’s interference in the presidential election and the triple suicide of a mother and her two daughters, is the worst possible situation we could be in. We need to ask the public whether it is appropriate for us to reform the nomination system,” said lawmaker Lee Mok-hee, putting pressure on party leaders. He was reiterating the argument that an opinion poll or a vote by party members should be used to reverse the party’s stance on nominating local candidates.

Others in the party - including lawmaker Oh Young-sik - back the party leadership and call for prudence. “We must join the two party leaders to do our best to pass the legislation to abolish the party nomination system,” Oh said.

The Saenuri Party (NFP) has been taking its time. The ruling party is hoping the domestic strife at the NPAD will drag on, believing that this will work to its own advantage. During a meeting of the ruling party’s Nomination Management Committee on Monday, committee chair and lawmaker Hong Moon-Jong said, “I hope that the New Politics Alliance for Democracy will stop hesitating and follow our lead in offering good candidates to the public through the bottom-up method. I want ruling and opposition candidates to be chosen by the people in an upright manner.” The remark was a sly jab at the division in the opposition party.

Even political scientists who were skeptical of the idea of abolishing the party nomination system in local elections have expressed their concern.

“The way things are looking, one side will nominate candidates for the election and the other side won’t. This does not conform to the attention of ‘normalizing abnormality,’ which President Park Geun-hye has announced as a key strategy for running the government,” said Kim Hyung-jun, professor of political science at Myongji University.

Kang Won-taek, a professor of political science at Seoul National University, suggested the possibility that the will of the people could be distorted by a lack of information. “I’m a student of political science, and even I don’t know who is running for my regional assembly, let alone the head of local government. How can ordinary voters be expected to know?”

“The way things are going, the opposition party is playing a game that it can’t win,” Kang predicted.

As politicians keep tossing the ball back and forth amid ongoing bickering and strife, the elections for hard-working local leaders are steadily getting closer. Noting that, regardless of which party may benefit from the current situation, the public will have to live with the consequences, experts are urging the parties to quickly find a solution.

“The opposition party is obsessed with the justice of its cause, while the ruling party is obsessed with its own interest,” said Kim Hyung-jun. “The only way that candidates and voters will accept the results of the election - whatever those may be - is if both parties come to an agreement about how to hold an equitable election. If they fail to do this, the fallout will be severe.”

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