Moment of truth

Ahn throws Moon `final’ offer for presidential deal

By Kim Tong-hyung

Independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo made what his campaign managers described as a final offer to Democratic United Party (DUP) rival Moon Jae-in late Thursday to merge their candidacies ahead of next month’s presidential elections.

The opposition challengers have been sparring over the method to choose a single candidate to face Park Geun-hye, the candidate of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party. The latest proposal by Ahn’s camp is a public opinion poll that puts equal weight on the support for Moon and Ahn and which of them is believed to have a better shot at defeating Park in the Dec. 19 election.

``It will be a 50-50 split between the support and the prospects for the hypothetical showdown (against Park),’’ Park Sun-sook, Ahn’s chief campaign strategist, said in an emergency news conference.

``This is our final offer. We hope Moon’s camp accepts this. It’s best that we start the survey as quickly as possible after agreeing on a research firm to conduct it.’’

At the time of going to press, Moon’s camp was undecided over whether to accept the offer. It’s obviously make-or-break time when it comes to the single candidacy efforts with the Nov. 26 nomination deadline looming.

Earlier in the morning, Moon and Ahn met behind closed-doors at a location in Seoul, as agreed during their televised presidential debate the previous night, but the talks broke down by noon. Their campaign managers then said the gap in opinion wasn’t narrowed by even ``an inch’’ and spent the rest of the day jabbing fingers at one another over the faltering talks to merge the candidacies.

``There is not much time left and I feel stuck,’’ Moon told reporters during an afternoon visit to a welfare center, although declining to comment on what had been discussed with Ahn before the lunchtime break up.

While Moon and Ahn have frequently met, they’ve rarely seen eye to eye, and consistently bickered over the method for selecting the single candidate.

Despite the troubles, the possibility of Moon and Ahn splitting has always been remote. Neither candidate would be willing to personally shoulder the blame for allowing the conservatives another run at Cheong Wa Dae as it would be political suicide. It seems all but certain that the next time Moon and Ahn meet, one of them will be conceding to the other.

Still, it could be argued that whatever form the union takes, it will be less than the sum of its parts when the process has already been dragged out longer than an Olympic opening ceremony. Park has been favored in a three-way race, but the outcome is less predictable if Moon or Ahn takes a backseat.

``To meet the nomination deadline and schedule the potential opinion poll, we need a finalized agreement on the rules today. We can’t delay the process anymore and we have to get things done right now,’’ said Kim Bu-gyeom, one of Moon’s campaign strategists, accusing Ahn’s camp of lacking a sense of urgency.

Song Ho-chang, who co-heads Ahn’s presidential camp, admitted there was an emotional wedge driven deeply between Moon and Ahn.

``There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding between the two candidates as was shown in their presidential debate. They need to settle that before the single candidacy talks can progress,’’ he said.

While the television debate between Moon and Ahn came off as rather tedious, its lack of powerful moments was in sharp contrast to the fiery exchanges between their campaign strategists off the air that forced the talks to break after Wednesday evening.

The two camps had been far apart on the questions to be asked on the potential public survey. Moon’s side want the people to pick a candidate they believe better represents liberal political values and priorities. Ahn’s campaign officials on the other hand want them to pick whoever they consider to have the better shot at defeating Park.

Moon’s camp conceded somewhat by discarding the ``liberal values’’ angle and suggested the poll be a simple popularity contest between Moon and Ahn. Thursday’s suggestion by Ahn’s camp was a belated response to this offer.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr