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Many people say that the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) will win the upcoming presidential election, and they cite good reasons for it. Alas, the opposite of all of them may also prove true.
With 23 lawmakers breaking with the ruling party, the GNP candidate will be no. 1 on the ballots in the presidential election. And in Korean elections, the number carries heavy symbolic significance. One means strong, 2 means weak. Or 1 means ¡°the haves,¡± the defenders of the position, while 2 means the have-nots, the challengers.
Korean voters traditionally root for the underdog. In 1997, the Kim Dae-jung-Kim Jong-pil coalition party won the presidential election for the no. 2 on the ballot. Since then, there have been seven nationwide elections, and candidates with the no. 2 won in six of them. Only in the 2000 general election did the party put at no. 1 win, though many candidates with the no. 2 party also fared well.
That the GNP candidate will be no. 1 on the ballot sheet is a favorite concept for anti-conservative forces. It won¡¯t be the Uri Party that will head the anti-GNP campaign. The new party will part ways with President Roh Moo-hyun and seek ways to merge with the Democratic Party. In the process, the image of the new party as the erstwhile ruling party will dim, while it becomes more recognizable as the underdog no. 2.
Many people say the ploy won¡¯t work because of the public's strong dislike of the current government. They are not completely wrong. But as time goes by, people will slowly change their mind. Soon, the Roh Moo-hyun vs. GNP opposition will be history, and when that happens, many factors that favor the GNP will instantly lose their meaning. That is what happened in the 2002 presidential election.
Around this time five years ago, president Kim Dae-jung's approval ratings hovered at 23 percent, an all-time low. He was weighed down by all kinds of scandals, including corruption cases involving his own sons. But for the support from his regional stronghold, Kim's overall approval ratings would have been about as low as Roh¡¯s are now. Yet the moment the presidential election campaigning was launched, the policy failures of the Kim administration were forgotten. The largest opposition party called on voters to "pass judgment on the government," but to no avail. Kim Dae-jung was forgotten, and instead all eyes were on the struggle between candidate Lee Hoe-chang with the no. 1 party on the ballot sheet and candidate Roh Moo-hyun with the no. 2.
Typically, regional and psychological factors determine the result of Korea's elections, and five years is too short for these factors to disappear. The general psychological trend in Korean society is a greater hatred of a pain in the neck than an empty stomach. In other words, many people are jealous of their neighbors' success, or, put in positive terms, they are more sensitive to morality than economics. Ideologically, they are inclined more toward equality than liberty. During the 2002 presidential election, candidate Roh fit that psychology well. Lee Hoe-chang was a candidate who made his neighbors envious. It is generally believed that this psychological trend determined the outcome of the election.
The main policy failure of the current government is that it has made people go hungry, and as a result angry. But if people can instead be made to envy something or someone, the tables can be turned. Those who are still doubtful of this hypothesis need only look back on the "VillaGate" scandal involving then candidate Lee Hoe-chang during the 2002 presidential election. It became known that Lee, his son, and his daughter were using a multi-story residential villa measuring more than 330 sq.m.
Although Lee enjoyed the highest approval ratings, even many conservatives came to see him from new and different angles. At the time, this reporter covered the presidential election as chief of the newspaper¡¯s political news team. "VillaGate" was a watershed for the 2002 presidential election, when it emerged that Lee had what the public hated most: a bigger house.
The GNP is still promising to resolve people¡¯s bread-and-butter concerns. But the anti-GNP front has plenty of material to make people envious of their neighbors¡¯ success. The party determined to improve ordinary people's economic circumstances has become the biggest party, no. 1 on the ballot. And the party watching for a chance to make people envy their neighbors¡¯ success is now the second largest, and ranked no. 2. It looks just like the last two presidential elections: the distribution of politicians between the GNP and the anti-GNP party; the regional backgrounds; the ideological issues; and the numbers on the ballot sheet. The fight is by no means over.
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