Opposition unified to defeat President’s confidants
By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff reporter
Opposition parties kept the pressure up on the governing party with two days left before Wednesday’s parliamentary by-elections, fielding unified candidates in two key constituencies.
The two constituencies are Eunpyeong in northern Seoul, and Chungju in North Chungcheong Province, where two close confidants of President Lee Myung-bak had been leading the races on the ticket of the governing Grand National Party (GNP).
In the Eunpyeong election, three opposition parties Monday declared Chang Sang, former president of Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, as their joint candidate against Lee Jae-oh, who successfully spearheaded President Lee’s 2007 presidential election campaign.
Yoon Jin-sik, President Lee's former top policy advisor, had been ahead of his opposition rivals, including Jung, in the Chungju constituency.
Both of the unified candidates ― Chang and Jung ― belong to the DP, which is confident that it will secure victory in at least half of the eight districts, which will pick their new local representatives tomorrow.
Now with the alliance of the opposition camps, some GNP lawmakers fear that the conservative party, which holds 176 seats of the 299-member legislature, may suffer defeats in most of the eight constituencies, if not all.
Pre-election polls found that the GNP secured a lead only in the two constituencies, while lagging behind or remaining too close to call in the rest of the districts.
The pessimism is also attributed to the fact that the ruling party was defeated in seven of the districts in the 2008 National Assembly elections.
Rep. Ahn Sang-soo, chairman of the GNP, claimed that the opposition parties’ unified candidate strategy is in breach of the constitution as it could render many of the ballots cast by some 6,000 registered absentee voters in the two constituencies invalid.
Ballots that have picked withdrawn candidates will not be counted.
“The opposition’s decision has not only destroyed absentee voters’ rights, but was an insult to them. This violates the suffrage guaranteed by the Constitution,” Ahn said.
The National Election Commission refuted this, saying the election law that does not have any clauses that prevents parties from fielding unified candidates.
The GNP has also seen a decline in popularity after being embroiled in several scandals ― including the ones involving a lawmaker’s inappropriate sexual remarks at a gathering with university students and the Office of the Prime Minister’s alleged illegal probe into civilians.