Slightly more than two months are left until the Dec. 19 presidential election. But none of the leading presidential candidates has produced a comprehensive platform ― a wide-ranging public statement of principles in policy on which he or she takes a stand in appealing to the electorate.
This is not to say they make few policy statements in their campaigns. They do make election promises on welfare, mention their ideas about future relations with North Korea and refer to other issues of concern to the public. But their policy proposals are coming in bits and pieces, which makes it difficult for the electorate to compare one candidate with another.
Welfare, “economic democratization” and job creation are among the themes that are frequently referred to by Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party, Moon Jae-in of the opposition Democratic United Party and Ahn Cheol-soo, an independent. It is difficult to understand what the candidates mean by them because they make little effort to flesh them out.
Take economic democratization, for instance. It is an elusive term, with the Korean Constitution defining it as one of the regulatory goals “to democratize the economy through harmony among the economic agents.” It means one thing to Kim Jong-in, a leading adviser to Park, who believes it is necessary to tighten regulations on family-controlled business conglomerates, and another to Rep. Lee Han-koo, a Saenuri floor leader more friendly to big businesses, who says there is no such textbook term as economic democratization.
At a time when Kim and Lee are at loggerheads over economic democratization, Park repeatedly commits herself to implementing it without elaborating on what she will pursue under its banner if she is elected president. Economic democratization means the dissolution of chaebol to people at one extreme in the party and nothing but cooperation between big and small businesses at the other.
Nor do Moon Jae-in and his advisers have any clear-cut ideas when it comes to job creation, which they promise to push for as one of the major election promises. Their promise lacks concreteness. He does not say how many jobs he intends to create and down to what level he aims to push the jobless rate. The lack of detail is only natural, given that Moon has yet to unveil his economic policy in which context his proposal for job creation will have to be considered.
No less ambiguous is Ahn Cheol-soo, who says it is impossible to promote economic democratization and welfare when the nation’s economy is losing growth momentum. Here again, he does not elaborate on what he means by economic democratization, welfare and growth momentum. He has yet to come up with growth projections.
Almost missing from the electoral debate are national security and strained relations with North Korea ― issues of no less concern to the electorate than welfare or job creation. Nor do they mention what Korea’s foreign policy will be like under their leadership.
When the candidates do refer to those issues, their remarks are nothing but superficial. Without mentioning concrete steps to be taken in the pursuit of his goal, Ahn merely promises to promote inter-Korean dialogue without detailing any requirements for an improvement in inter-Korean relations. It is the same with Park, who says she will pursue a sustainable peace based on a firm security posture.
Against this backdrop, Ahn says he will announce his platform around Nov. 10. But he will have to speed up the process of developing policies, given that a little more than a month will not be long enough for the news media, civic organizations and other groups, as well as the electorate, to vet all of them. For the same reason, Park and Moon will also have to make their platforms available for public scrutiny as soon as possible.
The presidential race will remain little better than a popularity contest until the candidates start to fight one another over concrete policy proposals. It goes without saying that many of them, welfare projects in particular, must be backed with budget projections if they are to convince the electorate.
