hankyoreh

chair of the Public Consensus Reform Committee (emergency committee) for the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (second from the right) contemplates during a committee meeting at the National Assembly

By Lee You Ju-hyun and Lee Seung-joon, staff reporters

Park Young-sun, chair of the Public Consensus Reform Committee (emergency committee) for the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), intended to appoint Lee Sang-don, professor emeritus at Chung-Ang University, and Ahn Kyung-hwan, professor emeritus at Seoul National University, as joint chairs of the party’s emergency committee and temporary heads of the party. But with the two figures having declined the offers, Park’s plan is effectively dead in the water. A fierce backlash is emerging in the NPAD, with some party members calling on Park to step down from her position because she pushed forward the plan before a consensus had formed in the party.

During a floor measures meeting on Sept. 12, Park said she favored a system with joint chairs recruited from outside the party, one a progressive and one a reform-minded conservative, and said she would appoint Ahn Kyung-hwan and Lee Sang-don to these posts. But on the afternoon of the same day, Ahn and Lee both indicated that they would not be able to fill those positions.

“The reason that I am saying I will decline the position now is because of my friendship with Park Young-sun, and the plan fell apart naturally,” Lee Sang-don said in a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

“I don’t think I’m the kind of person who can do political work. It is not my area,” Ahn Kyung-hwan said in a meeting with reporters, effectively rejecting the offer.

At the same time, there was strong opposition inside the party as well. Eleven three-term lawmakers - including Kang Chang-il, Kim Dong-cheol, Ahn Min-seok, Kang Gi-jeong, Noh Yeong-min, Jeon Byeong-heon, Choi Jae-seong, and Lee Sang-min - met for breakfast, where they concluded that Park Young-sun should take responsibility for the present situation by stepping down not only as the chair of the party’s emergency committee but also as floor leader. The group drafted a statement of opinion to this effect and delivered it to Cho Jeong-sik, NPAD secretary general.

Around ten lawmakers who belong to the Popular Alliance for Democracy and Peace, a faction associated with the late Kim Geun-tae, former head of the Uri Party (predecessor to the Democratic Party), gathered to add their voice to calls for Park to resign.

“Can we expect leaders to become established if they take a bruising at the very beginning and fail to receive the support of the majority? Whether progressive or conservative, it is unclear whether individuals who have not been tested politically are appropriate for a situation as dire as the present,” said one first-term lawmaker.

The fact that party members are calling for Park’s resignation suggests that the confusion in the party is entering a new phase. Even when Park faced sharp criticism last month for the failure of two rounds of negotiations with the ruling Saenuri Party about the special Sewol Law, there was talk about her stepping down as chair of the emergency committee, but no one insisted that she should surrender the floor leadership as well.

The main reason is that there is no obvious alternative to Park for floor leader. While there are several veteran lawmakers with four or more terms of experience who could serve as the head of the emergency committee, there is no one else who could handle the position of floor leader.

If Park were to resign from both of these positions, the party would effectively descend into anarchy. When Kim Han-gil and Ahn Cheol-soo, former co-leaders of the party, and the rest of the party leadership stepped down after the debacle of the by-elections on July 30, Park Young-sun was the only elected member of the party’s supreme council who was qualified to assume the mantle of party leader.

With important events in the National Assembly - including the special Sewol Law, the parliamentary audit, and the review of the budget - just around the corner, even electing a new floor leader would be problematic.

“If we suggest electing a new floor leader in this situation where the party is as fragmented as it is now, we would be criticized for caring more about our factions than the Sewol,” said one second-term lawmaker who is close to Park.

But now, even the suggestion that the party should remain under the leadership of Park Young-sun although she has lost her room to maneuver is likely to be controversial. “Now is not the time for the party to have an operation or go under the knife for reform; it just needs to be put on life support. The only method of neatly resolving this situation is to have the people who need to step down and elect someone new,” said one veteran lawmaker.

On Friday evening, heavyweights in the party including Moon Jae-in, Mun Hui-sang, Jeong Se-gyun, Park Ji-won, and Kim Han-gil held a meeting where they called on party members to refrain from calling on Park to step down. They decided to postpone discussions on the composition of the emergency committee, and to focus on negotiations over the special Sewol Law and the issue of new tax increases.

Though with the mediation of senior lawmakers, Park Young-sun narrowly escaped from one difficult situation, her current status and leadership ability remain uncertain.

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