Backsliding Politics

For What Are These Candidates Struggling?

The noisy feuds and disputes surrounding liberal parties' presidential primaries are turning Korea's political clock back decades. What is happening in the pro-government United New Democratic Party in particular _ abrupt rule changes following alleged mobilization of paid voters, ``ghost" voters, character assassination of candidates and physical clashes among supporters _ demonstrate how low party politics can fall. Old voters are seeing a repeat of the 1960s, which they do not welcome

All this is happening with elections just two-and-a-half months away. President Roh Moo-hyun, who returned from his three-day visit to North Korea on Thursday, might have felt frustrated with this report from Seoul while he was in Pyongyang. It is not easy even to know whether the extremely low approval rating of the new party is the cause or the result of its primary mess. Its hard to believe that these politicians governed the world's 13th-largest economy until quite recently.

The situation is not very different in the other big liberal political force, the Democratic Party. Looking back, however, the opposition Grand National Party also cannot claim to be free from blame regarding smear campaigns and money politics. Still the conservative party deserves some compliments for overcoming internal feuds through compromise and for its losing contender gracefully accepting defeat. But the relative smoothness in the primary process has less to do with ideological differences than the wide gap in voter support.

Why do these politicians have to resort to political maneuvering and voter mobilization so desperately? The reason is simple: the parties and their candidates fail to persuade _ or don't try hard enough to do so _ why they, and not their rivals, should govern the country. In other words, they cannot differentiate themselves from their competitors in terms of policies and political vision, but are going all-out to be elected using whatever ways and means.

Just as there are few differences over policy or ideology there is also little verification of the ability and integrity of candidates. The presidential election is becoming like a beauty pageant or the billboard charts, helped along by the hungry news media content with horserace-style coverage. The intention of liberal parties in introducing open primaries, or ``people's primaries" as they are called here, may be good enough. Only neither the politicians nor the people were prepared for it.

The world has praised Korea for achieving both political democracy and economic prosperity in just half a century. But the current political trials and errors show the nation has a long way to go before attaining democracy, not just in word, among politicians and voters.