[Editorial] Park in driver’s seat

Rep. Park Geun-hye, the leading presidential hopeful of the ruling Grand National Party, is set to take the helm of the party, which has been drifting without a rudder.

Park, who served as the party’s chairwoman between 2004 and 2006, has a demanding task cut out for her. She has to salvage the sinking party and navigate it toward victories in the April general election and subsequent December presidential election.

The stage for her comeback after more than five years was set last Friday when the embattled GNP leader, Rep Hong Joon-pyo, finally stepped down, bowing to pressure from virtually all factions within the party.

Hong’s resignation came two days after three of the party’s five top leaders staged a sort of coup against him by quitting their posts collectively. But Hong refused to step down. The next day, he unveiled a plan to overhaul the unpopular ruling party, which included a proposal to reform the process to nominate the party’s candidates for the April elections.

Yet this nomination reform scheme was the last straw. It was seen by many as a thinly disguised attempt to control the nomination process. Consequently, it triggered criticism from all sides.

Hong sought to quell growing opposition to his stewardship with the reform plan, but it accelerated his downfall. He has no one else but himself to blame, given that it was greed that lay behind his proposal.

It is still unclear in what capacity Park will lead the GNP. She is most likely to be appointed as head of an emergency leadership body, which can fill the vacuum left by the resignations of the four party leaders.

To many, this is deja vu 2004. Then, as now, the ruling party was in a panic. The party’s reputation was in tatters as it was found to have received truckloads of cash from domestic business groups during the 2002 presidential election campaign. Furthermore, it provoked an angry backlash from the public by impeaching President Roh Moo-hyun.

The party’s lawmakers, gripped by the fear that they would all lose in an imminent general election, forced their leader to resign with less than a month left before the election, and asked Park to come to the rescue of the beleaguered party.

Park lived up to their expectations. She helped the GNP avert a devastating defeat ― the party managed to win 121 of the Assembly’s 299 seats.

Many people still remember what Park did to shake off the GNP’s corrupt image. For instance, in a gesture of apology for the party’s wrongdoing, she had its headquarters relocated from a lavish building to outdoor tents set up in an empty space on Yeouido. She used a container as her office, which leaked when it rained.

The challenge Park now faces is no less demanding than that she confronted seven years ago. She needs to reinvent the party from the ground up to break with the past. To project a fresh image, she should bring in new faces and field them in the general election.

For this, she needs to set up a system that can nominate candidates in a fair and transparent way. In 2004, she was given credit for establishing a transparent bottom-up nomination process.

The ruling party is currently divided into several groups, reflecting the lack of a center of gravity. Park needs to exercise great political finesse to bring them together and prevent the party from breaking up.