The main opposition Democratic Party appeared to be coming roaring back when its gamble paid off in the April parliamentary by-elections. Its leader, Sohn Hak-kyu, ran in one of the ruling Grand National Party’s conservative bastions and won.
Then came an ill-advised decision by Oh Se-hoon, the GNP-affiliated Seoul mayor, who decided to put his opposition to free school lunches to a referendum. A turnout lower than the statutory minimum rendered the vote invalid last month, forcing Oh to resign immediately, resulting in a mayoral by-election on Oct. 26. It looked as if the mayoral post would be given to the Democratic Party on a plate.
Now the euphoria is gone, as voter sentiment has shifted in favor of fresh faces. As a result, the Democratic Party finds itself driven into a corner, with little chance of winning the mayoral race on its own and Sohn’s leadership called into question.
Still worse, its status of a party waiting in the wings to take power is in jeopardy. The party, which has been dreaming of unifying all opposition forces under its term, may be replaced or taken over by a new force if it fails to shed its image as a mundane, unresponsive and uninspiring party. It needs to reinvent itself as one that connects to the electorate demanding a change to the nation’s politics as usual, before the next parliamentary and presidential elections come around in April and December next year, respectively.
The opposition party’s fall from grace with the electorate came all of a sudden. News that professor Ahn Cheol-soo of Seoul National University was considering running in the mayoral race sent his approval rating into the stratosphere. Thunderstruck were potential candidates who just started jockeying for position in the Democratic Party.
They were in for another shock when Ahn, formerly a medical doctor-turned software developer, decided not to run and instead support lawyer-cum-social activist Park Won-soon. Ahn did so when his approval rating was at 50 percent, 10 times higher than that of Park.
Now Park is in the lead. Ahn’s support has apparently been vital in placing Park well ahead of all potential mayoral candidates in opinion polls.
As such, it did not come as a surprise when Han Myeong-sook, the frontrunner among the party’s potential mayoral candidates, announced Tuesday that she would not run. Her decision apparently irked the party’s leadership, which, if she had been selected as its nominee, had wanted to promote her as the candidate representing all liberal forces.
Park’s meteoritic rise and Han’s decision have turned the tables on the Democratic Party. Now Park wants to represent all the opposition forces, with the Democratic Party being one of them, though it would be a dominant one. He drove this point home when he met Rep. Sohn, chairman of the party, after Han made her decision to sit out the mayoral by-election.
Park turned down Sohn’s proposal that he join the party and pursue the party’s nomination. Instead, Park said he would promote himself as the joint candidate of all opposition parties and progressive civic groups, as he promised when he decided to run for the mayoralty. In other words, he was saying that, if he ran on the Democratic Party’s ticket, he could not count on the broad based support of independents that are expanding in number, especially those disillusioned of the existing party politics.
The rising distrust in party politics, as acknowledged by Sohn, is not the only cause of concern to the Democratic Party. More worrisome is the party’s plummeting popularity among the electorate.
Its approval rating was approaching that of the Grand National Party with 32.5 percent when it reached 31.6 percent in early August. But it dropped to 18.7 percent in a month, according to an opinion poll conducted on Tuesday. At a time when its leaders need to find a way out of crisis together, they are engaged in an acrimonious fight over mayoral candidate nomination rules. But of what use are the rules if the party is destined for defeat?
