The main opposition Democratic Party last week unveiled plans for reform, little more than a month after Kim Han-gil took the helm of the party that lost last year’s parliamentary and presidential elections. This news, however, drew little interest and was regarded as just a necessary procedure that reflects the stark realities facing the liberal party.
The reform plan calls for a reduction of staff at its central headquarters from the current 160 to around 100. Chairman Kim said his party will dispatch some of the excess officials to party chapters in provinces in an effort to revitalize their functions.
The opposition party will also dispose of its current building by August and relocate to a smaller building in Yeouido, which will be one tenth in size. At the same time, the party’s think tank will be independent of the DP completely in terms of finance, organization and personnel appointments so that it can devote itself to developing policies.
The reform package is a reflection of Kim’s strong determination to change the party’s deep-seated top-down culture into a bottom-up one on the road to retaking power in the 2017 presidential election. But whether the plan will be carried out properly is in doubt because some critics downplay the plan as shallow tricks aimed at retooling the bloated central party structure.
More problematic is that the plan is a far cry from what the opposition party has argued for, apparently as a result of the party leaders’ overt concern about independent lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo who is allegedly moving to form a new political party. The DP’s overreaction to Ahn, the IT-mogul-turned politician, is understandable, given that his yet-to-be-formed party is leading the main opposition party in terms of popular support by a large margin. A survey of 2.500 voters conducted by Realmeter last week showed that the approval rating for Ahn’s hypothetical party was nearly double the figure for the DP.
In fact, the DP’s innovation plan is devoid of genuine reform proposals that can win the hearts and minds of the people such as forsaking lawmakers’ vested privileges. The party says it will renovate the party first and carry out reforms gradually in the lead-up to the local elections in April, but actions speak louder than words.
What is needed now is for the DP to dig deeper into what its root problems are and be reborn as an opposition party that can reflect what voters want in terms of its specific policies while checking the government and the ruling party. The nation’s largest opposition party will be ignored completely if its reform initiative ends up as a political sideshow this time.