Lee stumbles out of the starting
block By Bruce Klingner
There's a saying in New England: "If you
don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes. It
is sure to change." The same can be said about
South Korean politics. After Lee Myung-bak's
landslide presidential victory in December, the
conservative Grand National Party (GNP) seemed
guaranteed to sweep next week's legislative
elections.
But a series of missteps by the
Lee administration and bitter infighting among
conservatives have lowered expectations. The
degree to which this will hinder Lee in altering
South Korean policy and transforming its economy
depends on how well the conservative factions can
work together after the election.
Lee has
watched his popularity plummet by 20 points from a
post-election high of 70%. A public perception of
an arrogant and
heavy-handed presidential
transition team overstepping its bounds was partly
to blame. Even more damaging were Lee's
controversial cabinet minister nominees, several
of whom had to withdraw over corruption
allegations. The nomination debacle also had the
unfortunate consequence of reminding voters of
Lee's own series of alleged scandals, an image
that the progressives sought to exploit.
Lee failed to heal the rift within the
conservative movement after he narrowly defeated
former GNP chairwoman Park Geun-hye for the party
nomination. The hard-fought battle was to
determine the composition and future policy
direction of the party as well as who would be the
GNP standard bearer. Park represented the
traditional conservative wing of the party, while
Lee pushed a "pragmatic conservatism" that
appeared more centrist and appealing to a broader
swath of the electorate.
Lee's supporters
were perceived as being rude, if not vindictive,
toward Park. Animosities over perceived slights
were exacerbated by a contentious battle over the
selection of candidates for the legislative
election. The GNP did not choose 50 incumbent
lawmakers, 39% of its current 128 National
Assembly members, as candidates for next week's
election. Park declared that the trust between her
and Lee "had been shattered" and accused Lee of a
vendetta by removing her supporters from the
National Assembly. The president's representatives
pointed out that an equal number of Lee's
candidates were also removed from the final
candidate list.
The bitter feud confirmed
that deep fault lines remain within the party.
Many incumbent National Assembly representatives
who supported Park either were not selected or
resigned in protest over how the nominations were
handled. They are now running as a "coalition of
independents", tentatively named the "Pro-Park
Geun-hye faction".
Initial polls show
these candidates will threaten GNP candidates in
North and South Gyeongsang provinces, the
traditional party stronghold. Several of these
lawmakers have stated that, if they win the
election, they will return to the GNP but as an
independent faction. They have not defined how
that would work.
Grinning like a Cheshire
cat, conservative Lee Hoi-chang hopes to
capitalize on the GNP's misfortunes by recruiting
defecting legislators to his small Cheongchong
province-based Liberty Forward Party. Lee, twice a
GNP presidential candidate, ran as an independent
candidate in the 2007 presidential race.
His party merged with the People First
Party on February 12. Lee is hoping to be the
political heir to former prime minister Kim
Jong-pil who used a Cheongchong power base to
create the third largest political party at the
time. Lee said his party's goal is to obtain 50
seats, the same number as Kim Jong-pil's party
once held, though he is unlikely to do so.
The end result is that the conservative
vote will be split among three competing
conservative factions.
Old progressive wine in new
bottles The progressive parties will
benefit from the GNP's missteps but remain
hampered by their own factionalism and uncertain
policy message. The progressive opposition remains
weak and in disarray after losses in the
presidential election and four previous
legislative by-elections.
The progressives
remain a disparate collection of groups and
individuals unable to define, let alone rally
behind, a common vision or theme. The long-running
battle between the liberal and centrist wings
continues. They remain undecided whether to battle
Lee Myung-bak for the policy center or advocate
ultra-left policies as an alternative.
Despite its foibles, the GNP still
commands 46% public support to the United
Democratic Party's (UDP) 17%. In an attempt to
gain public favor through repackaging, the UDP
replaced at least 30% of its incumbent National
Assembly members with new candidates. The party
said the ousted incumbents had performed poorly,
been convicted of crimes, or had low public
support.
The move resonated to some degree
with the electorate, but party chairman Sohn
Hak-kyu admitted, "Although the party is doing
better, we are still in perilous condition, like a
patient who has just been taken off his oxygen
respirator."
The progressives have tried
to increase their support by depicting their cause
as way to defend South Korean democracy, by
balancing power between the executive and
legislative branches. This appeals to the Korean
concept of yeoso yadae (smaller ruling
party, bigger opposition party). The UDP has
dramatized that "if the GNP seizes enough seats to
have power to change the constitution, it could
pose a threat to democracy as we would have a
multiple-party system in name only". The UDP hopes
to win 100 seats, but this remains doubtful.
As
Seoul goes, so goes the nation
Political regionalism, referred to as
Korea's "east-west conflict", remains the dominant
factor in South Korean politics, despite efforts
to reduce its significance. Political parties'
support relies largely on core regional
constituencies: The southwestern Jeolla provinces
are traditional progressive strongholds, and the
southeastern Gyeongsan provinces are reliably
conservative.
However, to win nationwide
elections, parties must reach beyond these regions
to gain sufficient support. The most critical
swing regions are the Seoul city district and the
Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in the center
of the country. Seoul and Gyeonggi are perceived
as transient regions with less pronounced senses
of regional identity due to the large influx of
population in recent decades. Voter loyalty is
often determined by ancestral home district.
In a high stakes gamble, the UDP is
pitting its party leaders against GNP favorites in
two conservative strongholds in downtown Seoul.
Sohn Hak-kyu and Chung Dong-young, both failed
2007 UDP presidential candidates, will battle
heavyweight GNP National Assembly members Park Jin
and Chung Mong-joon - a 2002 presidential
candidate - in the high visibility Jongno and
Dongjak districts of Seoul.
Although Park
Jin is running in his home district, the other
three eschewed easy re-election in their
districts. Instead, they chose to put their
political lives on the line in hopes of raising
their stature as presidential candidates in five
years. Jongno is the symbolic center of South
Korean politics and seen as a swing district. As
such, polls on both races will be closely watched
as a key indicator of any shifts in the electorate
mood.
Ever-shifting political
landscape Early hopes for a GNP super
majority of 200 seats, sufficient to revise the
constitution, are long gone. Now the party hopes
to gain a simple majority (150 of the 299 seats).
Publicly, the party has announced a goal of
winning 167 seats, but privately it expresses
concern that it may fail to gain a simple
majority.
Public support for the GNP has
been falling during the past month. An MBC poll
found that 47% of respondents were disappointed by
the GNP's candidate selection process, while 57%
approved of the UDP's nomination process. A
mid-March Chosun Ilbo poll of 17 electoral
districts in Seoul showed the GNP ahead in seven
districts, the UDP ahead in one, and eight
districts too close to call. The growing stature
of the pro-Park alliance is more bad news for the
GNP.
Although the election will doubtless
produce a net increase of seats for the GNP and a
net loss for the progressives, the change from
initial expectations will impact the relative
strengths of the parties. The progressives,
foreseeing a forced exile in the political
wilderness after their drubbing in December, will
be reinvigorated to attack Lee Myung-bak and
attempt to derail his policies.
The
conservatives, emboldened if not cocky after Lee's
victory, are now chastened and face serious
challenges from within their own house. Park
Geun-hye has warned that "the GNP will have a hard
time staying united after the election is over".
Rather than produce an electoral
affirmation of its principles, the GNP will have
to confront serious challenges after the
elections. Will the three conservative factions
fight or work together once the new legislators
are seated? Can Lee Myung-bak woo the defectors
back to the GNP? What impact will it have on his
ability to implement sweeping economic and foreign
policy reforms?
Of greater consequence for
South Korea, will the nation return to the
legislative gridlock seen during the Roh Moo-hyun
administration if the GNP underperforms in the
election? Both parties have had trouble connecting
with the voters, in large part because the
campaign has been strikingly bereft of policy
debate. In any case, President Lee will have
to operate under greater constraints than expected
immediately after his landslide victory in
December. Moreover, the global economic downturn
and rising oil prices will make it more difficult
for him to easily deliver on his economic campaign
promises. Pyongyang's expulsion of South Korean
officials in the Kaesong joint economic venture
may mark the first in a series of North Korean
tests of the new president.
But balanced
against these challenges will be significant
improvements in Seoul's relationships with the US
and Japan, allowing for greater policy integration
and leverage over North Korea. Most importantly,
Lee has set South Korea on the right policy path,
undoing the damage wrought by five years of Roh's
administration. And as the old Korean adage goes,
"A journey well begun is half done."
Bruce Klingner
is senior research fellow for Northeast Asia in
the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage
Foundation (heritage.org).
(Copyright
2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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