Political cartel abandoning moderates

Without rooting out the tricks and a political cartel, it seems a long way until moderate voters gain political representation in Korea.

Jung Hyo-sikThe author is the political news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo. Koreans are confused. Following the Aug. 15 Liberation Day speech, President Yoon Suk Yeol has been declaring war each day. “Communist totalitarian followers and anti-state forces incite anti-Japanese sentiment,” he says.

Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party (DP), is on an “indefinite” hunger strike in defiance of the president’s “prosecution-based dictatorship.” Some doubt the sincerity of Lee’s strike, but if it is a sincere strike, it’s also a problem. The leader of the majority party with 168 seats in the 300-member legislature striking in front of the National Assembly building itself signifies the absence of politics.

The hunger strike is also a forewarning that extreme confrontation will continue until the next parliamentary elections on April 10, only seven months away.

Korean people are plain dumbfounded. It’s been 545 days since the presidential election ended, and they are watching the Yoon-Lee race again. When declaring his candidacy on June 29, 2021, Yoon talked about “fairness” and “common sense.” He didn’t even mention “ideology” at the time. But the president who strictly drew a line from the “outdated ideology forces” in the former liberal administration is suddenly leading the right-wing ideology war.

What about the opposition leader’s sudden hunger strike to protest Japan’s discharging of the contaminated Fukushima wastewater? Lee, already under several indictments for his suspicious activities, may be able to block a motion for his arrest this time, but the release of the contaminated water cannot be blocked without scientific evidence that can overturn the IAEA’s conclusion.

The extreme confrontation between Yoon and Lee is not a one-off political news. It is a black hole sucking up all important issues in state affairs. The governing and opposition parties use the conflict to line up their representatives, party members and supporters to draw support from them.

I cannot help but wonder if this extreme standoff is really a parliamentary election strategy for both the governing People Power Party (PPP) and opposition parties, including the DP. Last week’s Gallup Korea and National Barometer Survey (NBS) polls showed that 32 percent are non-partisan and moderate voters. But the parties want to bring together their existing supporters and give up the moderates, which make up one-third of all voters.

There are ways to do that. They can eliminate a choice for the moderates or make their votes a waste. In that case, the majority party and the second majority party can keep their vested interests no matter who wins the majority. In the 21st parliamentary elections, the two parties created their own satellite party to snatch the seats that would otherwise go to minor parties.

This time, they have colluded to prevent third parties from entering into the National Assembly after proposing the novel “regional proportional system” in the name of overcoming the outdated regional sentiment in Korea. When seats are divided in small numbers among the parties based on the rate of voters per region, it is impossible for legislative candidates to win proportional representative seats unless a party is regionally-based, like the PPP and DP. Without rooting out the tricks and a political cartel, it seems a long way until moderate voters gain political representation in Korea.