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Had the parliamentary election been held on Dec. 19 simultaneously with the presidential vote, what would our political landscape look like? At the time Grand National Party candidate Lee Myung-bak won in 210 out of the total 245 constituencies across the country. In 170 constituencies, he trounced United Democratic Party candidate Chung Dong-young by a margin of over 20 points. Liberty Forward Party candidate Lee Hoi-chang barely managed to win four electoral districts in his home base, the Chungcheong region. Calculated that way, the GNP would have won nearly 250 parliamentary seats, far above the 200 two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution. A GNP dictatorship could nearly have emerged. That was public sentiment only 100 days ago.
Now, with the general election 12 days away, what is the situation? The topic of the conversation these days is if the GNP will be able to secure even a simple majority (150 seats). President Lee's approval ratings in the wake of the presidential ballot was 86 percent. His current approval ratings hover between 50 and 60 percent, falling nearly 30 points in 100 days. Respondents who think voters should grant the Lee administration a majority so that it may function normally account for 42 percent, while 40 percent call for restraining it so that it may not administer the country on its own. Trends have it that the former group is slipping and the latter rising. One in three voters who supported Lee in the presidential election have changed their allegiance and intend to vote for non-GNP candidates, according to a poll. To be sure, the GNP is not alone the recipient of gloomy news. Considerable forecasts say that the GNP will win a majority without difficulty because the party's traditional support base and its allegiance to the party remain unchanged, and that the UDP's parliamentary candidates are mostly incumbent lawmakers with a weak competitive edge, having barely scraped a win on the back of the adverse repercussions from the unsuccessful attempt to impeach president Roh Moo-hyun.
Large snowflakes melt easily, says the old adage, and public sentiment is indeed worrying. It seems only a few days ago that the public worried about a possible emergence of a GNP dictatorship, but now the party is having to struggle to win a parliamentary majority.
What blunders have the Lee administration and the GNP committed in the past few months to see the enormous margin of 5.3 million votes melt like snow? Charges against the over-eager presidential Transition Committee are nothing but an excuse. The transition teams under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun also blundered, but the approval ratings of the two presidents still hovered between 70 and 80 percent around this time.
What then has turned the general election, so hard on the heels of the presidential victory, into a judgment on the administration? The triple whammy of the appointment of key government officials, nomination of parliamentary candidates and remarks and actions on the part of the administration and party leadership. Government personnel decisions and candidate nominations should play the role of an adhesive for national integration and internal reconciliation of a party by rallying hearts divided in the course of the presidential primary and election. However outstanding, a politician cannot occupy the helm with his or her cronies alone. Those who played the major role in producing the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations didn't resemble them in terms of social class, region, religion, schooling or bloodlines. They were able to take power because voters who were very different from them in many respects rallied behind them for a while. The same is the case with the Lee administration. If the leadership accommodates only yes-men and dismisses all others as antipathetic, soon only the cronies support the leadership. That was the case with the weary and lonesome last years of the Roh administration, when only his support group Nosamo remained behind him.
More serious is the fact that there is nobody in the Lee administration, despite consistent public complaints, who is eager to listen to them, who stands up and says, "I've done wrong. I'm responsible," and who devotes himself to attempting to rectify these blunders. The party and the administration, leadership and rank-and-file alike, point one finger at their opponents, while the public clearly sees that with the remaining three fingers they point straight back at themselves. They have yet to learn to admit defeat by the people. Having found so much fault with the Roh administration, which repeatedly ignored public sentiment, they now look ready to copy its bad habits.
It is not too late. But they will have to learn to go down on bended knee before the public and admit they were wrong. Only then can they survive.
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