By Chung Hee-hyung
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) threatened this week to withdraw support for the minor opposition Unified Progressive Party (UPP) unless embattled lawmakers-elect step down.
The party is struggling after it was revealed that vote-rigging occurred in its candidate selection for last month’s National Assembly elections.
The move comes as the interim leadership of the UPP advised the lawmakers-elect under fire to leave the party no later than Monday.
The KCTU also urged the UPP to settle discord in its ranks that could tear it apart.
“We will remove our support for the UPP until the party lives up to our expectations and embarks upon bold reform,” said the KCTU’s leader Kim Young-hoon at Thursday’s central executive committee meeting. The warning came after more than nine hours of intense debate among union members as to what stance they should take against the trouble-hit UPP.
The move could be seen as a conditional support for the party’s current leadership under Kang Ki-gab, who has set up an emergency committee and belongs to an outside faction.
Kim warned that the union group was giving the party “a last chance” to clear up its own mess. “The deadline will be around the end of June. Every minute and second will count during the period,” Kim said in a radio interview on Thursday.
If Kim’s remarks were a harsh scolding of Kang’s leadership, it was also an unmitigated disaster for mainstream members. The KCTU specifically demanded in its statement that the two lawmakers-elect - both of whom are members of the party’s mainstream faction - must resign. The party’s internal investigation in early May revealed that they were chosen as parliamentary candidates through voting fraud during the party’s proportional representative selection process. This caused an uproar both within and outside the party and has been at the heart of the UPP’s intra-party dispute ever since.
Both factions immediately understood the implication of the union’s message, although their responses were completely different.
Lee Jung-mi, spokeswoman for the non-mainstream emergency committee, said at a press conference, “We humbly accept the KCTU’s request and we will do our utmost to win back their support.”
She also said the committee was considering expelling the lawmakers-elect from the party if they refuse to step down voluntarily. “We have already asked them to submit their intention to resign in writing by May 21.”
In return, the mainstreamers claimed that they had no “trust” in the current emergency committee and that the two lawmakers-elect had been “victims” of public opinion in the ongoing strife. They also categorically refused to let elected members step down.
“Ousting the elected members could only result in the party splitting in two,” said lawmaker-elect Lee Sang-kyu in a radio interview shortly after the KCTU’s announcement.
The voting scandal, that has even provoked violence between the divided factions, has shaken the party since early this month, revealing that the UPP is neither united nor very progressive. The endless discord between the mainstream and outsider groups cast serious doubt on the body’s unity. The violent free-for-all melee that broke out between members reminded ordinary voters that the party is much less progressive than it claims to be.
The scandal was serious enough to prod the KCTU into declaring Tuesday that it would no longer back the party. Despite Thursday’s partial endorsement, it seems that Kang’s leadership has precious little time to make use of its strongest supporter’s last chance.
The writer is a Korea Times intern.