By Lee Tae-hoon
Negative campaigning and election violations reached a new low as big name politicians ran neck-and-neck during Wednesday’s by-elections to pick three lawmakers, a governor, and dozens of local administrative chiefs and council members.
An official of the National Election Commission (NEC) said the election watchdog uncovered 137 election violations as of Wednesday afternoon.
“We have filed 23 lawsuits, issued 101 warnings and handed seven cases to the police for further investigations and six cases to the prosecution for indictment over the breach of election laws,” she said.
The official noted that the number of legal feuds excludes litigations filed by political parties and individuals.
A political observer claims that both the ruling party and opposition parties failed to resist the temptation of engaging in negative campaigning for respective reasons. The ruling party, invariably linked with the Lee Myung-bak administration has seen signs of losing popularity amid an oncoming lame duck presidency. The opposition parties are desperate to win back public support.
“Unfortunately, Korea has witnessed political regression and demise in its hard earned culture of policy-oriented campaigning in the past few weeks,” he said, asking for anonymity.
On the eve of the elections, the governing Grand National Party (GNP) said that it has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Park Jie-won, floor leader of the DP, for allegedly misleading the public regarding the election.
Park said in a media interview that if Ohm Ki-young, a former head of MBC and the GNP candidate in the gubernational race in Gangwon Province, is elected, another election will soon take place to replace him.
“The GNP has filed a lawsuit against Park on charges of spreading malicious rumors,” GNP spokesman Rep. Ahn Hyoung-hwan said.
“The DP floor leader misled the public, by suggesting that Ohm was behind the operation of an unregistered call center.”
Last Friday, police arrested some 30 people for making covert telephone calls to persuade voters to cast ballots for Ohm at an unregistered call center.
Investigation authorities are studying email and phone records of the call center to find out whether Ohm knew or was involved in the illegal campaigning.
On Monday, the GNP also filed a lawsuit against Rep. Choi Jong-won of the DP for “groundlessly” associating President Lee with GNP candidate Ohm over corruption.
“His brother steals tax payers’ money. His wife is doing all sorts of stuff to squeeze out tax payers’ money,” Choi said. “If the DP wins in the 2012 National Assembly general elections, the first lady, President’s brother, former Gangwaon governor Kim Jin-seon and GNP candidate Ohm will have to serve prison terms.”
President Lee’s older brother Lee Sang-deuk is a six-term lawmaker of the GNP.
DP lawmakers claimed that the operation of the call center was a thoroughly planned election tactic by Ohm.
The ruling party has countered by accusing Choi Moon-soon, the DP’s candidate in Gangwon, of sending “groundless” text messages to voters.
The GNP claims that Choi’s camp sent SMS text messages to 220,000 random people, claiming that Choi was closely catching up with Ohm with a gap of 1 percent.
Choi’s camp has admitted sending the text messages but claimed that it was merely a mistake of thoroughly checking the veracity of the online news.