The year of 2012 is a year of elections, with the nation set to select members of the National Assembly in April and the next president in December. Having both elections in the same year happens every 20 years. Their outcomes will have a long lasting impact on the nation’s political landscape.
The elections will determine which political groups, conservative or liberal, will lead the nation at a time when the world economy is coming out of one crisis only to be drawn into another. They will also determine which political groups will be put in the driver’s seat at a time when it is hard to predict what security threat the post-Kim Jong-il North Korea poses to the South.
In addition, the electoral outcomes will be a judgment on the performance of the legislature under the control of the conservative Grand National Party during the past four years and a conservative administration led President Lee Myung-bak during the past five years. At the polls, voters will surely ask if they are better off now than before.
Of immediate concern to the conservative Grand National Party and the liberal Democratic Unified Party, is the contest that comes first ― the parliamentary elections. The rivals are in the process of reorganizing themselves in the ways they see fit to endear themselves to the electorate.
The ruling Grand National Party has recently launched a decision-making “emergency council,” empowered to develop an election platform and establish criteria for election candidates.
The GNP, whose Seoul mayoral nominee was defeated by an independent in the by-election last October, is on an emergency footing. The humiliating defeat came as a wake-up call to a complacent Grand National Party, which currently holds 169 seats in the 299-member National Assembly.
No less alarming was the outcome of opinion polls, which put the ruling party behind a party assumed to be created by social activists in approval ratings. Rep. Park Geun-hye, the most likely presidential candidate of the party, also trailed behind a social activist-cum-Seoul National University faculty member, Ahn Cheol-soo.
As it dawned on the party that a continuation of the present situation could mean a landslide defeat not just in the parliamentary elections but in the presidential election, it ousted party chairman Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, created an emergency council and handed its leadership over to Rep. Park. The council included among its members outsiders that had been critical of the party in the past.
Reform is the keyword for the emergency council, which is now attempting to nudge the conservative party toward the center, putting a greater emphasis on welfare than before. As part of its reform program, it is also seeking to screen out lawmakers deemed incompetent, tainted or both in favor of new blood.
Now the question is whether or not the emergency council will prevail in the selection of parliamentary nominees in the face of strong resistance from incumbent lawmakers whose nominations are at risk.
The party had a taste of the bitter struggle between the council and disgraced lawmakers when two council members demanded last week that nominations be withheld from those lawmakers who have been supported by President Lee Myung-bak. In a counterattack, the targeted lawmakers, including Rep. Hong, said the council members must be ousted if the party was to keep itself from falling apart. Rep. Park needed to control the damage by saying the council members had expressed their personal views, not the opinion of the entire council.
To fight the conservative party, the liberals have created the Democratic Unified Party by merging the Democratic Party, political activists claiming to have inherited the legacy of President Roh Moo-hyun and other progressive groups. Now they are in the process of selecting the party chair, who will lead them through the April and December elections.
Their party, which has abandoned the conventional way of electing the chair by a vote of its deputies, has now opened the election process to grassroots party members and those not affiliated with the party. The deputies’ weighted vote is reduced to 30 percent of the total in what may be seen to be a devolution of power.
Ballots held until Jan. 14 will choose the chair and five other members of the decision-making supreme council from nine candidates. The final outcome will be announced after the vote by deputies the next day.
When its leadership is formed, the party will have to determine what reform proposals to include in its election platform and what principles to apply to the process of screening applicants for nomination. In addition, the party will have to forge unity among its members. Here again, the main obstacle will be resistance from incumbent lawmakers who are denied nominations. The party will find itself at the risk of factional division between those from the Democratic Party and newcomers.
However, the Democratic Unified Party is better positioned than the Grand National Party for the parliamentary elections if the Seoul mayoral race is any guide. It may benefit from the shift in the electorate’s sentiment against the ruling party, as witnessed in the Seoul mayoral contest. Moreover, Park Won-soon, new mayor, who owes his election to the endorsement of the Democratic Party, now promises to join the new party. This will certainly help enhance the appeal of the new party’s candidates.
But the caveat to the party is that the voter sentiment is not static. A wrong step by a favored candidate or party may upset an anticipated outcome.
What impact will the outcome of the parliamentary elections have on the presidential election? That will be hard to measure, given that each voter will be given so many things to ponder before making a final decision at the polls. They range from the implications of one party controlling both the legislature and the executive and an alternative split government to the personal appeal of the presidential candidates to the electorate, as opposed to that of the parties they represent.
No matter what kind of government and leadership the electorate will produce through the parliamentary and presidential elections, they will undoubtedly have a profound effect on where the nation will be headed in this turbulent era. It will also have a great impact on the nation’s political landscape for years to come.
