[Editorial] Run-off election

By any account, it is far from normal that all attention is being riveted to the murky process of choosing a single opposition candidate with little more than a month to go before the Dec. 19 presidential election. A tug of war between the Democratic United Party and an independent political group over fielding a unified candidate has taken the place of debates on policies and future visions, which should have already started between the final runners from the ruling and opposition blocs.

The negotiation on the single candidacy came to an abrupt halt Wednesday, just a day after it kicked off, as aides to independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo denounced the DUP for spreading false rumors that Ahn will make a concession to its candidate Rep. Moon Jae-in.

Ahn later said the process is more important than the result in merging the candidacy, noting only a fair and clear process could enable the single opposition candidate to persuade voters to support him. In a news conference Friday, he proposed to hold a meeting with Moon on how to realize new politics and conclude the work on unifying their candidacies after Moon took substantial moves to reform his party.

The rupture in the negotiation has made it a more pressing task to complete the merger process by Nov. 26 before the presidential candidacy registration ends on that day.

Considering the tight timeline, opinion polls are considered the only plausible method for deciding on who will run against Rep. Park Geun-hye, the nominee of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party. Ahn’s proposal for talks with Moon has also raised cautious speculation that they may reach a final conclusion between themselves.

While Ahn and Moon have pledged efforts toward political reforms, many voters seem to regard the current situation, in which they are left unaware of who will become the opposition’s standard-bearer just a month before the election, as far from new politics. Ahn, software mogul-turned-politician, may be too ideal or nave, if not with an ulterior motive, in repeatedly wishing for a fair process of unifying the presidential candidacy, which should be inevitably a kind of zero-sum game and thus entangled with political gimmicks. It would also be just unreasonable to leave the politically crucial choice to opinion polls with many flaws.

The ongoing fuss, which has stolen the public’s attention from what it should be really focused on, raises the need to consider changing the presidential electoral system. One of the effective alternatives might be to introduce a run-off vote as has been held in France and some other countries. Under the scheme, which pits two leading contenders earning most votes but short of a majority against each other in a second-round ballot, Moon and Ahn might not have had to engage in their prolonged tug-of-war. To the contrary, voters might now be seeing them competing with concrete pledges and visions to be elected president or at least become a runner-up in the first-round vote.

In a country where every president has been elected with less than 50 percent of the popular vote since 1987 when the current system was adopted, the new method would also help enhance the political legitimacy of an election winner.