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The Uri Party was defeated in all four constituencies in parliamentary by-elections on Wednesday, with the Millennium Democratic Party candidate Chough Soon-hyung, who led the impeachment of the president in March 2003, elected in Seoul¡¯s Seongbuk-eul constituency.
The Uri Party lost parliamentary by-elections in six seats in April last year, in four seats in October, and barely scraped a lone one in North Jeolla Province out of 16 gubernatorial and mayoral seats up for grabs in May. Cheong Wa Dae has remained silent on the ruling party's crushing defeats in the four parliamentary by- and local elections since the 2004 presidential elections. It has applied double standards of taking ruling party victories as enduring public support and attributing defeats to temporary emotion.
Perhaps because it is used to being routed in elections, the ruling party has lost a sense of what such a trouncing signifies. Talking about the constituency where the man behind the president¡¯s impeachment won and the ruling-party candidate came a distant third, the ruling-party spokesman was complacent. "The Grand National Party's solo run has been broken,¡± he said. If those in government are numb to the pain, let alone try to mend their ways, when voters slap them in every election, they have effectively stopped doing their job.
The GNP, for its part, on Wednesday broke a legendary streak of never being beaten in by-elections, though habitually losing in presidential and general elections. Victory in only three is essentially a loss for they were essentially party strongholds. In the May 31 local elections, voters expressed a fervent hope that the GNP can be a real alternative to government and ruling party, from which they have nothing more to expect. But the main opposition party, under the impression it has already come to power, has become bogged down in factional strife and goes golfing and partying at the scene of disastrous floods. And so, two months later, the electorate has shown that it can just as easily give the GNP up again.
Amid their daily struggle, people need at least a hope that things can get better if they persevere. But public sentiment revealed in Wednesday¡¯s by-elections suggests people believe the government has let them down and there is no viable alternative in sight.
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