|
Millennium Democratic Party presidential candidate Roh Mu-hyun and National Alliance 21's Chung Mong-joon reached an agreement on the process of how to file a single candidate, the two runners participated in a two-hour TV debate Friday at 7:00pm. Prior to the TV discussion, the negotiation was ruptured for a while when Roh's negotiators delayed accepting the proposal of Chung's side to include the prevention of Grand National Party candidate Lee Hoi-chang's supporters deliberately choosing a candidate they would preferred to face in the presidential race.
The negotiators concluded in the final agreement that the surveyors will ask the candidate preference among all runners, including Lee, and any poll result that shows Lee's support as less than 35%, an average from the polls in the last 2 weeks, will be excluded from the single candidate selection. The negotiators said that it was to prevent possible manipulative maneuvers by Lee's supporters pretending to back another candidate.
The surveys will then ask who out of Roh and Chung has a better chance against Lee . The answers of the respondents who supported candidates other than Lee will be counted for the single candidate selection.
The timing of the poll and result announcement is not yet determined, but because it could be ruled invalid, it is expected to be taken on Saturday evening at the earliest, immediately followed by the result. Both sides reconfirmed that the defeated runner would serve as an election committee chairman for the winner, and that they would review future plans, such as policy integration and party mergers, for an effective election campaign and collaboration after the election.
Meanwhile, the Grand National Party strongly denounced the Chung-Roh TV debate Friday, calling it "a kind of a fraud to select the heir of Kim Dae-jung by confusing the eyes and years of the people."
(Kim Min-chul, mckim@chosun.com )
|
