By Kim Jong-chan
An aide to former Chairwoman Park Geun-hye of the Grand National Party (GNP) denied a report that she may bid farewell to her right-hand man, Kim Moo-sung.
Kim also gave an explanation, denying that he, without presenting a report to Park, conveyed to former party Secretary-General Lee Bang-ho a list of pro-Park people wishing to run in the National Assembly elections last year on the party's ticket.
As in this case, feuding within the governing party has been mainly caused by matters related to nominations for elections between individual members, mostly between mainstreamers and followers of the former chairwoman.
They are in the same boat. But the fences of internal discord seem to be too high to mend.
In the latest effort to resolve the factional discord, mainstreamers offered to appoint Kim as the next floor leader. After a meeting at Cheong Wa Dae following the party's crushing defeat in the by-elections, President Lee Myung-bak and party Chairman Park Hee-tae came out with a plan to appoint Kim to the party's No. 2 post after the chairman.
But Park rejected the offer, citing the party chapter, which stipulates that the floor leader be elected through a vote of partisan lawmakers.
The incumbent party chairman hurriedly sent his chief of staff, Kim Hyo-jae, to the former chairwoman, who was on a trip to the United States, to appease her ― only to meet with rejection again.
Mainstreamers and Park's followers blamed each other for the election defeat. Mainstreamers attributed it to the Park group's lukewarm cooperation in campaigns. The party, which won a landslide victory in the last parliamentary elections, failed to obtain a single seat out of five parliamentary positions up for grabs in the by-elections.
The rivalry has shown little signs of subsiding. In the party's contest to elect a floor leader and chief policymaker, mainstreamers voted down the pairing of Hwang Woo-yea for floor leader and Choi Kyung-hwan for policymaker. Hwang belongs to neither the mainstream group nor Park's faction, and Choi is a supporter of the former chairwoman.
Mainstreamers united to elect Ahn Sang-soo, a longtime supporter of President Lee, and Kim Seong-jo as floor leader and chief policymaker, respectively.
After the showdown, a lawmaker who is loyal to Park grumbled that they have no choice but to ``go our way," an indication that the party may break up some time before the next presidential election in December 2012.
Park lost her bid for the party's 2007 presidential nomination to President Lee by a razor-thin margin.
According to polls, she still enjoys more popularity than any other politician in the country.
An exodus of lawmakers from the GNP took place after many of the pro-Park non-mainstream lawmakers were denied party nominations for the parliamentary elections. They left to run as independents mostly on the party's home turf ― the Gyeongsang provinces.
Their boss, Park, a native of North Gyeongsang Province, was reported to have told the deserters to do their utmost to win and return to the party. Most of those independents ran successfully in the polls. Some of them rejoined the party, while others created the pro-Park Geun-hye alliance.
Factionalism ruins the nation as well as an organization. It is time for the mainstreamers to mend fences with followers of Park and pool wisdom to help stabilize politics in the country. There is no need for regionalism-based politics. No one but President Lee, a critic of old-fashioned politics, can resolve the problem.