By Jung Min-ho
The two liberal presidential hopefuls appeared lost Wednesday in empty rhetoric, squandering a valuable opportunity to articulate their respective political road maps and demonstrate their grasp on policy issues.
Moon Jae-in, the candidate of the main opposition Democratic United Party and independent Ahn Cheol-soo held their first debate amid negotiations to merge their candidacies ahead of the deadline for candidacy registration, which falls Monday.
But neither emerged as the clear winner as both failed to explain their pledges with a sense of purpose.
“After watching the 100-minute debate, I have no idea what either would actually do if elected,” 23-year-old college student Bang Su-won said. “I expected to hear how they would execute their pledges over issues like unemployment and cutting college tuition in half. But what they did was to bring up problems without providing ways to tackle them.”
At Kim Koo Museum and Library in Seoul, the two candidates talked about four topics: the state of politics, the economy, society and foreign policy. At times, however, they resorted to hurling out abstract questions such as, “What do you think is the spirit of the times?” and “What kind of leadership do you think we need to bring a change to the political landscape?” preventing them from discussing the crux of the matters.
One common complain that emerged was in explaining their economic policies, the two often lacked figures to back up their arguments.
They seemed overly cautious not to be insulting, failing to counter the opponent’s claims in apparent fear of alienating the supporters of the other.
The format allowed each candidate to question the other for seven minutes at a time. But both often ended up answering their own questions and failing to produce powerful responses when questioned.
At one point, Moon asked Ahn, “In what ways are you going to raise money needed for improving social welfare?” the Ivy League-educated professor only responded, “Health and welfare takes up most of the budget,” leaving viewers perplexed.
“The debate felt like a college study group discussion and, frankly, it was a flat-out disappointment. They used a lot of abstract terms like ‘reinforce,’ ‘shrink’ and ‘consider,’ and it really didn’t tell me anything,” 28-year-old businessman Park Tae-yang said. “It was a lose-lose situation… and now I’m not sure who to trust.”
Park added, “If they don’t point out each other’s policy flaws, how can we evaluate them?”
Nevertheless, many experts agreed that Moon performed better than Ahn, as he came off as more proactive and offered his plans in more detail.
Officials from the ruling Saenuri Party, the camp of conservative presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye, spun the debate as being “sluggish and unclear.”
“There were many times that I didn’t understand what they were talking about,” Saenuri Party spokesman Ahn Hyung-hwan said. “They looked tense without a trace of humor.”