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Uri Party floor leader Chang Young-dal said his party would cooperate with the Democratic Party and Uri Party defectors to select promising candidates for the upcoming parliamentary by-election in three electoral districts. They can allow those candidates run as independents, while getting unified support from them, Rep. Chang said. Until recently, Uri was the majority party with 108 lawmakers. Now it announces it will not nominate its own candidate. But the move should not be taken at face value. There is an ulterior motive.
The Uri Party has suffered humiliating defeats in five regional elections since June 2004. They are accustomed to losing in elections. There is no way such a party is avoiding nominating a candidate due to fears of losing.
In upcoming regional elections, Kim Hong-up, the second son of former president Kim Dae-jung, is running in the Shinan-Muan electoral district in South Jeolla Province. In Daejeon, People First Party leader Shim Dae-pyung is planning to run. The Uri Party plans to let these two run as independents while supporting them from behind the scenes, thus ensuring the support of voters in the South Jeolla and Chungcheong provinces when they regroup under a different name later this year.
When it formed four years ago, the top priority of the Uri Party was to overcome regionalism in politics. Since that slogan has lost its appeal, it seems Uri needs to adopt a more primary color. It needs to take on an undisguised approach to lure voters. So it wants to revive old habits.
Uri was formed by lawmakers who said they had enough of the Democratic Party, and now hordes of lawmakers left the Uri Party saying they¡¯ve had enough there, too. After the mass exodus in February, there is talk of another wave of mass departures from the party. Eventually, all of these people, including the Democratic Party, are planning to regroup under a new tent. It is a bizarre trick. The mass exodus was a ploy to fool disenchanted voters, and its virtual abandonment of nominating parliamentary candidates must be unparalleled in Korean politics.
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