It looked good on the surface -- the leaders of the ruling and main opposition parties getting together during the Chuseok holidays to strike a deal on knotty political issues like setting new rules for the next parliamentary elections.
The meeting between Kim Moo-sung and Moon Jae-in led to an agreement to adopt a form of open primaries to select candidates for the elections next April.
Kim, leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, and Moon, head of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, also agreed to offer “extra points” to women, youths and disabled people when they seek party nominations.
The preliminary registration of candidates will start six months before the election, compared with four months under the current rule, a move aimed at encouraging newcomers to run in elections.
Kim and Moon, however, faced an immediate backlash from their own parties over the deal. Some of the criticisms are well founded, as they, most of all, failed to resolve more urgent issues, like redrawing electoral districts and setting the number of seats for the proportional representation system.
But what drew the loudest outcry was the agreement on the telephone polling scheme for the open primary. Under the agreement, the general public participating in the primaries will be given “secure telephone numbers” instead of using their actual numbers. This is aimed at preventing parties and candidates from buying votes or mobilizing their own supporters.
For its positive aspect that open primary will reflect the views of the general public more than those of the party bosses and apparatus in nominating candidates, the use of virtual numbers and the introduction of the open primary itself have stirred uproar in the political community.
The fiercest resistance comes from the Saenuri faction loyal to President Park Geun-hye, as they suspect that Kim seeks an open primary system in order to weaken Park and her associates’ influence in selecting candidates.
In an apparent show of discontent, key members of the pro-Park faction such as Suh Chung-won, Kim Tae-ho and Rhee In-je did not attend a meeting of the party’s top decision-making body party leader Kim called Tuesday to discuss the agreement he made with Moon. Floor leader Won Yoo-chul and Cho Won-jin, a member of the pro-Park faction, publicly criticized Kim over the agreement.
Moon also faced criticism from his party’s floor leader Lee Jong-kul, who pointed out that he should have focused on introducing a province-based proportional representation system instead of the open primary system.
These backlashes show that Kim and Moon should put their own houses in order and unify their parties’ stances before coming to the negotiating table.
