[Editorial] Reform or perish

The People Power Party (PPP) must remember that it cannot persuade the public with a slap-on-the-wrist punishment.

The People Power Party (PPP) under the stewardship of Chair Kim Gi-hyeon since March has been rapidly losing public confidence amid internal conflict. The party’s Supreme Council is missing two of the four elected members in its morning meetings. The two have been forced to keep a low profile for causing trouble with their behaviors.

The biggest troublemaker is Kim Jae-won who was forced to keep his mouth shut after his repeated slips of the tongue over the May 18, 1980, Gwangju Democratization Movement; his outright praising of far-right pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon for “uniting the conservatives”; and his degrading of the April 3, 1948 uprising and massacre in Jeju. Rep. Thae Yong-ho, another member of the council and a North Korean defector, claimed that the Jeju uprising was orchestrated by North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung.

Kim Jae-won and other leaders of the PPP were elected to their office entirely through party members’ votes in the March 8 convention. As they bypassed public opinion in their promotion to members of the council, they should have taken extra care to win public approval. But they had done the opposite. For instance, Kim Gi-hyeon did not punish the senior members strictly. Instead, he removed Hong Joon-pyo, Daegu mayor, from his post as an advisor for the PPP after Hong criticized the party leader for the PPP’s closeness with Jun.

The party is even being shunned in the traditional conservative voting base of Daeju and North Gyeongsang. The confusion over a labor policy like stretching the 52-hour workweek added to the public distrust. The incompetence and self-indulgence owe to the one-sided leadership structure. As key positions have been dominated by loyalists to President Yoon Suk Yeol, the party has lost its self-correcting function.

The result is the skidding approval rating of the party. Its rating is nearly 10 percent behind the Democratic Party (DP), engulfed with judiciary risks related to its boss Lee Jae-myung and his predecessor Song Yong-gil. The PPP’s candidates were even defeated by the progressives and DP members in the April 7 by-elections in Ulsan, also a conservative voting base.

The PPP must come to a rude awakening that the public disapproves more of its impotence and arrogance than the corruption charges related to the main opposition. The party must restore house order fast and speed up its initiatives for the labor, pension and education reforms if it wants to win enough seats in the parliamentary elections next April.

Last week, the PPP added new members to the Ethics Committee. The committee must take disciplinary action against the members who have caused controversy and rebuild the party identity before the 43rd anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising on May 18. The party must remember that it cannot persuade the public with a slap-on-the-wrist punishment.