DP leadership race sinks into mudslinging

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) is heading toward the climax of its national convention to elect a new party leader, with regional conventions taking place this week in Jeolla, Seoul and Gyeonggi, home to the party’s largest blocs of members. The ruling party leadership is not merely expected to share responsibility for running the country with the president; it must also serve as a bridge between the government and the people. It should coordinate major policies and legislation with the government while putting the brakes on measures that drift too far from public sentiment. Yet judging by the behavior of the candidates for party leader and top party posts, it is difficult even to imagine the convention producing such leadership.

As the exchanges among party leader candidates Kim Min-seok, Jung Chung-rae and Song Young-gil have grown increasingly acrimonious, policy debates and competition over competing visions disappeared long ago. In their place is an endless contest over who is “pro-Lee” or “anti-Lee,” along with personal attacks branding rivals as “traitors” or “the chief culprit behind the party’s transformation into a personal fiefdom.” The mud fight between Kim and Jung, in particular, has become difficult to watch. Jung has attacked Kim as a “traitor” by bringing up his past decision to join a “Chung Mong-joon new party,” while Kim has focused relentlessly on the so-called “Lee-Jung conflict,” turning the race into a competition to dig up the other’s political past. Both have even threatened to refer their rival to the party’s ethics committee, raising concerns that factional conflict could continue long after the convention.

The candidates appear energetic when it comes to fighting for power, but serious discussions of issues directly affecting people’s lives are nowhere to be found — whether it is addressing shortcomings exposed in the process of revising the Criminal Procedure Act or dealing with the potential fallout from changes to the real estate tax system. Even in televised debates broadcast live, the candidates have devoted most of their time to attacking their rivals, while discussions of livelihood issues have remained superficial. Their response to the turmoil surrounding single-stock leveraged ETFs, which intensified volatility in the domestic stock market, is a case in point. When Jung’s allies raised the issue of Kim’s responsibility as a former prime minister, Kim’s supporters countered by claiming that a relevant law had been passed under Jung’s leadership — only to retract the argument after realizing that the measure in question was actually an enforcement decree. Rather than seeking alternatives to policies that could cause substantial harm to the public, they seemed interested mainly in finding ammunition for the vote.

With high prices and interest rates weighing on households and a heat wave adding to their woes, people’s economic anxiety is deepening. The government’s changes to the real estate tax system also show signs of aggravating rental housing shortages. The ruling party leadership should be subjecting itself to scrutiny over solutions to such problems. But that is difficult to expect from the DP convention as it stands. The candidates are engaged in a fruitless struggle to win the votes of hard-line party members, but they should remember that public sentiment stands above party sentiment. The prevailing mood among voters may well be this: What, exactly, are these DP candidates fighting for?