The single biggest issue in the presidential election only forty days off is whether candidates Roh Moo-hyun and Chung Mong-joon will actually unite under the same ticket. This particular campaign can be characterized by how the country still doesn't know who'll be running with the election right around the corner.

The 'negotiations' going on between the two camps involved are equally unclear and confusing. The Millennium Democratic Party and National Unity 21 have both named parties to negotiate the matter, but after they named a time and place to meet, they then failed to carry through. There's lots going on in the way of "unifying the anti-Lee Hoi-chang candidates," but nothing is clear and substantial.

Even more pathetic is the fact that both sides are acting like they're thinking about little more than the calculations directly involved. They're in second and third place in opinion polls, and "unifying" their campaigns seems to be about little more than beating the guy in first place. There is little moral justification or logic for such a move being presented to the country. The cooperation that existed between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-pil in the last presidential election five years ago at least made sense because at the time they had planned to better distribute power, with the adoption of a cabinet system of government for the executive branch.

And have not Roh and Chung both lived entirely different kinds of lives, and are their politics and ideology directly opposed? It's all the more reason combining their candidacies cannot be just about combining their votes to win. Each of them say the anti-Lee votes add up to 60%, but there's no assurance that those votes would automatically go to the one between the two of them who might run on behalf of both. Are they not starting on the whole business of joining forces without having thought through the penetrating reasons?

This is why Roh and Chung need to convince the country that they have something in common when it comes to, for example, their views about security and the US-Korea alliance. It shouldn't be about a game where they both pretend to feel the unifying of their candidacies is a moral calling that can't be avoided.

November 9, 2002