You knew this was coming. The debacle of only winnning 22 of 55 seats up for grabs has created tension in the ranks of the Grand National Party.
GNP Chairman Kang Jae-sup took some heat from Lee Jae-Oh, the guy he beat for the top spot last year (JoongAng):
“It is only a matter of course that the chairman should resign because [his party] lost in the election,” Lee said yesterday. “The governing Uri Party had to renew their leadership [every time they lost], and they went through that eight times.”
Note to Lee: Considering how well the chairman resigning thing has worked for Uri, are you sure you want the GNP to be emulating it?
That being said, the GNP clearly needs to get some things in order and the party is said to be looking at reform.
Of course, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak are going at it as well. I guess we could have expected that.
BTW, that last piece (from the Korea Herald) has the breakdown of the results, which I will note for the record:
The by-elections, marking the last before the December presidential election, saw 22 GNP members elected out of the 56 contested posts. Contributing to the lowly figure was the string of party candidates embroiled in election fraud involving bribery and blackmail.
Executive GNP lawmakers have offered to resign to take responsibility.
Independents soared by recording 23 victories.
The Uri Party secured just one out of the 16 seats it competed for. To Uri’s consolation, the Democratic Party and People First Party nabbed seven and three seats, respectively. Uri is keenly eyeing an alliance with these minority opposition parties.
That is indeed a pathetic performance all around.
4 Comments
Seems like Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak will almost certainly split up the GNP after one of them is annointed the official candidate.
If these guys could stop throwing the bones around for just a tick and join forces, we might have a team here!
…is this the only country that the mainstream parties split the vote so that Independent candidates come up the middle?
ROK politics is still in the infancy of Democracy. HanNara representing the East. The rest is a regional interest coalition simply to counter the East. US politics had such a day and time, too. North and South.
Like Kim Jong Pil said about a decade ago, Korean politics has matured a bit into conservatives vs liberals. Quite a bit, but not completely so.
When it comes down to it, the heart of the matter is still the people of a region trusting their local party reps and not really a matter of liberalism or conservatism.
And why shouldn’t they? HanNara poured all the tax dollars into Kyung Sang Do and Kyung Ki Do(any party would have for Kyung Ki Do). Leaving KangWon, Choong Chung, Jeolla, Jeju relatively weaker industrially for decades.
Go hyang sa ram deul ee yea, bhop a joo ee so ~
They rewarded their people, handsomely.
The only mature voters are of Sudogwon and Choong Chung Do. Choong Chung and Sudogwon are the only places that cast a meaningful 부동표. Based on true weighing of liberal/conservative or $ matters. The rest is 고정표. It’s all decided beforehand, because of who came out of that region. This carries some weight in the US, too. Usually, a President candidate from the South will carry the South. Bill Clinton did. Park Geun Hye is simply a rep of regionalism within HanNara. Lee Myung Bak is the new wave, based on political ideology and economic conservatism, the right candidate for Korea. Park is not.
Choong Chung and Sudogown, historically the difference makers who choose not based on regionalism, but on whom they perceive will benefit them more. Choong Chung, though, does it because they know they can never have their own strong regional party, because they can’t beat the southern 2 in population numbers.