ed Future of opposition

Fundamental reform a matter of survival for NPAD

Park Young-sun, who quit as floor leader of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) on Thursday, won fame as one of the party’s hardliners before assuming the post.

She refused to deliberate on a bipartisan bill on foreign investment late last year, when she was heading the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee, out of her personal belief, and the 2014 budget plan narrowly passed the parliament only at dawn on Jan. 1.

But even Park appears to be a moderate, given that she stepped down only five months after inauguration following fierce infighting with the party’s hardliners over the special Sewol law.

The severity of chronic factional feuds in the largest opposition party can be inferred from her letter emailed to its 130 fellow lawmakers. In the letter, the three-term legislator said there had been moves and arguments by ``extremists who were willing to drain the ballast water from the boat,’’ indicating that some party members stubbornly shook her in their attempts to protect their own interests, regardless of whether the party sank or not.

Her statement is symbolic, considering that one reason the Sewol ferry sank was that ballast water was drained so more freight could be carried. Nothing illustrates the party’s dire straits better than this.

It is undeniable that she must answer for her blunders revealed through the two botched agreements with the ruling party and her premature appointment of Lee Sang-don, a former governing party member, to co-lead the opposition party’s emergency committee. But it is sad that her energetic push to reform the party has been frustrated in the face of the strong backlash from its hardliners.

Most problematic is the NPAD’s chronic factional strife, which often resulted in the party going too far without any regard for political reality. True, in her letter Park showed her animosity toward the hardliners, alleging that those seeking the party leadership intentionally stirred inner conflict by making extreme demands.

And the result was the NPAD’s back-to-back defeats in local and by-elections at a time when the public’s renunciation of the government and the governing Saenuri Party reached its peak in the aftermath of the April 16 ferry sinking.

It is not hard to understand why the opposition party has gone astray. That is simply because the NPAD has been overwhelmingly swayed by hardliners, especially those affiliated with its pro-Roh Moo-hyun faction, who habitually ignore common sense and reason and stick to anachronistic ideology and factional interests.

It is no hyperbole, then, to say that similar incidents can recur at any time unless such chronic ills are addressed properly. Otherwise, the NPAD will have as much chance of regaining power in the 2017 presidential election as it has of finding a fish in a tree.

The NPAD launched its innovation committee this week, but it is doubtful if the committee will bring drastic changes.

One thing is certain ― thorough and fundamental reform is a matter of survival for the party.