Factional strife at the ruling Saenuri Party has been rekindled following the interim leadership’s surprise decision Thursday to reinstate the seven lawmakers who defected from the party after being denied nominations at the April election and were then elected as independents.
The decision angered the party’s mainstreamers loyal to President Park Geun-hye, as the seven readmitted lawmakers included Yoo Seong-min, a former floor leader who was forced by the mainstream faction to step down from his post after clashing with Park over major policies.
The pro-Park faction vehemently criticized the interim leadership for deciding to accept Yoo’s return without consulting the Presidential Office or canvassing lawmakers’ views beforehand.
It called for the resignation of the party’s floor leader, Rep. Chung Jin-suk, and Secretary-General Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, for pushing other members of the interim leadership toward a hasty vote on the explosive issue.
Yet the backlash is totally unwarranted, as the interim leadership made the right decision in a perfectly democratic way.
Before revolting against the decision, loyalists to Park should remember how the interim leadership was launched. Before its inauguration early this month, the mainstream faction killed Chung’s plan to set up an emergency committee and a reform panel simply because most of the two committees’ members were nonmainstreamers.
The floor leader was then forced to launch an interim leadership that consisted mostly of figures recommended by the pro-Park group. Of the 11 members of the leadership, only three, including Chung and Kweon, are nonmainstreamers, while all of the six invited from outside the party are considered to be pro-Park.
What this means is that the decision to accept Yoo and other defectors could not have been reached without endorsement from some of the six outside figures.
Most members of the interim leadership turned out to be more in touch with public sentiment than the party’s mainstreamers. They were well aware that the pro-Park group was opposed to readmitting the former floor leader. But they nevertheless decided to accept his return because that was what they thought the public would support.
Mainstreamers’ reaction to Yoo’s reinstatement is simply outrageous, in light of what they did to him in the nomination process. They should offer a sincere apology to him, not make a fuss about his return.
The party’s nomination committee, led by the pro-Park faction, went to great lengths to deny the former floor leader nomination at the April election. He had no choice but to quit the party to run in the election.
The committee’s grossly unfair treatment of Yoo was one of the factors that caused many of the party’s staunch supporters to turn their backs on it. The result was an election defeat.
The faction should respect the interim leadership’s decision and embrace the former floor leader. It also needs to go further than that. It should pursue reconciliation with nonmainstreamers after acknowledging its responsibility for the election outcome. Without doing so, the party cannot embark on the path of reform.
