By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Prosecutors will question four people who took photos of their ballot papers with cellular phones at polling booths of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) to pick its standard-bearer for the presidential election in December.
The National Election Commission said Monday it asked the prosecution to look into possible Election Law violation.
``They claimed they took the pictures to show their children or to keep them as souvenirs. But we decided to ask for an investigation as some of them were confirmed to have participated in the primary election campaign and may be related to specific candidates,'' a commission official said.
The regional prosecutors' offices in Busan, Ulsan, Incheon and Daegu where the four voters were caught, received request from the commission, and will decide soon whether to investigate the case themselves or to transfer it to regional police stations.
The investigation will focus on the purpose of the photographing. Investigators will look into whether specific candidates' camps provided or tried to provide money to the voters, or ordered them to take photographs.
According to the Election Law, both those offering money to voters to influence an election and voters who accept such offers are subject to punishment.
There are no punitive rules for photographing. But the prosecution is likely to apply the law that charges those who leak secret balloting before a vote count is made.
Lawyers say taking the photos itself is not in violation of the law, but exhibiting them is. They say the photographers can be punished if they did it for money.
``If the action is confirmed to have been made at the instruction of a specific candidate, it is a violation of the Election Law. In that case, even though the candidate was selected for GNP's presidential race, the victory may be invalid,'' the commission official said.
But he said the annulment of the voting result should be decided after the prosecution' investigation is completed and a court ruling is made. ``The GNP has to decide first whether the primary had problems in fairness or not,'' he said.
The Park Geun-hye camp claimed most of the voters who took photos at the ballot box were supporters of candidate Lee Myung-bak, saying Lee's camp systematically bribed voters. Some camp members protested the election commission's decision to delete the photos from the cell phones, claiming it was destroying evidence.
Lee's camp claimed Park's camp set up the photographing.