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By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
Tiffany Ahn, a 26-year-old office worker at a foreign firm, bumped into a couple of men handing out name cards of candidates on her way to her office in Yeouido near the National Assembly building.
She saw the picture on the card and thought he may be one of the candidates who passed screening under new rigid criteria to run in the April 9 Assembly elections.
Major political parties including the governing Grand National Party (GNP) and the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) selected candidates under more stringent standards than before. Those who have been involved in corruption scandals aree disqualified.
``In my opinion, the parties should have done this a long time ago. But better late than never. Giving an Assembly seat to corrupt figures was a complete waste of taxes,'' Ahn said.
The GNP decided to rule out people who have been fined for any charge, especially corruption, from its candidate list as part of efforts to revamp its organization.
Soon after, the UDP adopted rules to disqualify figures similarly sentenced, due to inside and outside pressure.
As a result, several heavyweights, including former Presidential Chief of Staff Park Ji-won and former President Kim Dae-jung's second son failed to win a party ticket.
Park was convicted of taking bribes worth 100 million won from two local conglomerates, while Kim was found guilty of receiving about 2.5 billion won from several companies in July 2002.
Former lawmaker Kim Min-seok, who once enjoyed huge popularity due to his young and reformative image, also saw elimination because he had been sentenced to a suspended jail term for taking 200 million won in illegal political funds from SK Group in June 2005. He was then running for Seoul mayor.
Lee Yong-hee, Vice Speaker of the Assembly and four-term lawmaker, was also included in the losers' list as he was sentenced to a suspended jail term for receiving bribes.
As the UDP's screening committee suggested including ethical rules in the nomination criteria, party members who made inappropriate remarks or behaved against the party line were also left off the candidates' list.
Rep. Rhee In-je, who unsuccessfully ran in December's presidential election, failed to win a ticket due to his frequent desertion.
Political parties' efforts to trim off under-qualified figures aimed at regaining the public support.
Political analyst Andy Jackson told The Korea Times that both parties feel the need to present a better product to voters ahead of elections.
``The GNP in particular has an image of being a safe house for corrupt politicians. The UDP also has a strong reason to purge corrupt members.
``Having them represent the party runs counter to the reformist image they are trying to project. But it can only help the parties if they can convince voters that they have really cleaned up their acts,'' said Jackson.
Jackson currently teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College, Gyeonggi Province.
But Jackson said the corruption issue is certainly not the top concern of voters. ``Convincing them that your party has really reformed itself could make the difference in some close races and may also be worth a couple of seats on the proportional representation list.''
Meanwhile, voters questioned qualifications of candidates who passed screening.
Ahn said it is still way too early to know whether the GNP gave preference to confidants of President Lee Myung-bak, who was elected on the party ticket in the presidential race.
``The parties started out screening with a good purpose but I am worried that their revamp efforts aimed at ruling out rivals in the party.''
Of 245 candidates selected by the GNP, 157 are known as confidants to Lee while only 44, who supported his former party rival Park Geun-hye during the presidential campaigning, won a party ticket. The remaining 44 were neutral figures.
Contrary to the party's claim of recruiting fresh figures, the GNP gave tickets to 110 people, 31 percent of whom graduated from Seoul National University (SNU) while 28.1 percent worked in legal circles.
SNU graduates from legal circles have dominated the Assembly and the GNP selected candidates with a similar ratio four years ago.
The situation is not that different in the main opposition party.
The UDP, created through a merger with the minor opposition Democratic Party (DP) and the now-defunct governing United New Democratic Party (UNDP), suffered from internal feuding due to factional-based selection.
Some former DP lawmakers complained of their elimination, citing their high support in districts they applied for.
They insisted they received no ticket because of their affiliation with the DP.
Go Jae-deuk, former head of Seongdong-gu Office in Seoul, said he found several serious problems in the screening after his defeat against two-term lawmaker Im Jong-seok, who belonged to the UNDP.
Some of the defeated officially requested the screening committee review their cases and others threatened to desert the party to stand as independents.
The UDP has also stressed that it would replace about 30 percent of incumbent lawmakers with fresh figures believed to be corruption-free. But the replacement rate stood at only about 20 percent.
Regarding the screening of candidates in the United states, Jackson said the screening function there is done by the media, including blogs and opposing politicians who present negative information about candidates to the public.
``Opposition research is an important part of most major election campaigns. Voters complain about negative campaigning but it serves an important function by giving voters information they need to make an informed choice.
``In effect, voters are their own screening committee,'' he said.
He added it generally works well even in districts that are strongly controlled by one party.
``With the nomination process in most American states being relatively open, a politician has to convince tens or hundreds of thousands of voters, rather than a 20-person committee, that he is not a crook.''
But the American system does not always screen out flawed public officials, he said.
For example, Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Berry was elected to a third term in 1994 despite being convicted of cocaine possession four years earlier, Jackson said.
ksy@koreatimes.co.kr
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