[Editorial] Winding up campaign

The two presidential candidates are to wind up their election campaigns Tuesday, the last day of legal campaigning. During the official campaign period that started on Nov. 27, they have mounted energetic campaigns to garner as many votes as possible.

With just one day left before the election, there is no predicting the outcome of the vote. The last polls taken about a week ago showed the gap between Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party and the trailing Democratic United Party candidate, Moon Jae-in, was narrowing. If the trend has continued, the race must be too close to call.

On Sunday, Moon received a boost from Lee Jung-hee, the sharp-tongued presidential candidate of the minor opposition United Progressive Party. Lee announced her withdrawal from the race, a move designed to help the DUP candidate win the election.

Although Lee’s support rating was less than 1 percent, her resignation could influence the vote result as, according to the last polls, the gap between the two frontrunners ranged from 0.1 percentage point to 3.7 percentage points.

Lee’s resignation, announced hours before the third presidential TV debate, called into question whether her participation in the previous two TV debates was appropriate.

Despite her low approval rating, she was given the same amount of speaking time as the other two candidates, who each had a support rating of more than 40 percent.

And Lee was expected to quit in the middle of the race from the beginning as she put priority on opposition victory. But the National Election Commission had already paid 2.7 billion won to her party.

The election law needs to be rewritten to have candidates who quit before the polls open refund the campaign subsidies they have received.

Lee’s withdrawal made the third and final presidential TV debate on Sunday night a one-on-one showdown. The debate was crucial as it was the last chance for voters to size up the two main candidates.

Unlike in the two previous debates on Dec. 4 and Dec. 10, Park and Moon engaged in a heated exchange throughout the two-hour-long debate. They discussed four topics ― the nation’s low birth rate and population aging, crime prevention and social safety, development of science and technology and educational reform.

The two candidates both pledged to expand welfare services to boost the low birth rate and curb growing poverty among aged people. Moon estimated the cost of implementing his welfare pledges at 39 trillion won a year, while Park put it at 27 trillion won a year.

Yet neither was specific about how to foot their welfare bills. A more serious problem was that their welfare packages did not sound convincing. Even if all of their pledges are put into practice, the nation’s woefully low fertility rate will not increase significantly as they fail to address the complex nature of the problem.

To tackle the conundrum, it is necessary to reform various formal and informal social institutions, such as wedding practices, which takes time and effort and, more than anything else, changing people’s perceptions.

The two candidates also clashed over the allegations that a National Intelligence Service official engaged in an online smear campaign against Moon.

Park attacked the DUP for putting the NIS employee under house arrest for two days without presenting any evidence, while Moon accused Park of attempting to intervene in a case being investigated by police.

Police announced late Sunday night, after investigating the NIS official’s desktop and laptop computers, that they could not find any trace of her having posted slanderous comments against Moon.

With the three TV debates all ended and official campaigning nearing a close, it is time for voters to select a candidate who they think can lead the nation to prosperity and safeguard national security.