[Column] A terrible rerun of a sad drama

Seo Seung-wook

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.

Spring of 2004 was cruel for the conservatives. The Grand National Party (GNP) had pushed for the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun on March 12, but the decision was later overturned by the Constitutional Court. The conservative party was already disgraced by accepting a large amount of presidential election funds. Its approval rating plummeted. People’s support turned to Roh’s Uri Party. A poll conducted by the JoongAng Ilbo on the day of the impeachment voting in the National Assembly showed 34 percent of the respondents supporting the Uri Party, while 10 percent still supporting the GNP. You didn’t have to wait for the results of the parliamentary elections on April 15. Expectations were high that the governing Uri Party will win more than 200 seats in the 300-member legislature.

Under such dire circumstances, the GNP held a national convention just 23 days before the general election to elect an acting leadership amid a crisis from the resignation of Chairman Choe Byung-ryul over the party’s failed impeachment of president Roh. In the national convention, Park Geun-hye was elected as new leader of the party. She first said that she would oversee the embattled party from its new headquarters built inside a makeshift tent. Under the leadership of the “Election Queen,” the GNP won 121 seats. Although the Uri Party won a majority —152 seats — the GNP’s narrow defeat was itself a miracle.

The national convention elected Park as the new head by adopting an entirely new system of reflecting delegate votes and public opinion polls 50 percent each in the first round of the leadership election. If the votes from the delegates were only used, Rep. Hong Sa-duk was expected to win. But Park won the internal election as she overwhelmingly won the opinion poll.

The introduction of opinion polls was a desperate move by the conservative party to survive. The GNP was powerless when the Uri Party held a public primary in 2002 to elect Roh as its presidential candidate.

Rep. Chung Jin-suk, center, chair of the emergency committee of the People Power Party, speaks before a meeting in the National Assembly, Dec. 29, 2022. The governing party decided to elect its new head by only the votes of party members in a national convention on March 8.

Public opinion also played a key role when Chung Mong-joon gave up his candidacy on the eve of the presidential election to support Roh. The conservatives had no way to cool the heat of the Uri Party’s primary so enthusiastically participated by the public.

In contrast, the GNP was overshadowed by its strong candidate, Lee Hoe-chang. The party’s old, obstinate image remained. It was a must for the party to improve its diversity and reinvent its identity. The struggle had begun in the national convention in June 2003, when Rep. Choe Byung-ryul and Rep. Suh Chung-won competed over the leadership of the conservative party. The party included 110,000 citizens randomly selected by a computer in the electoral college for the leadership election. The size of the electoral college was 230,000, the largest ever.

Soon, more advanced public opinion polls were introduced to elect new leader of the GNP followed by the reflection of online voting results by 20 percent in the national convention in July 2004. In that convention, Rep. Won Hee-ryong, the current minister of land, infrastructure and transportation, won the second place and joined the Supreme Council at age 40. Such a dramatic transformation helped the conservative party survive. It helped set the foundations for the party’s consecutive victories in the 2007 and 2012 presidential elections.

But such a crucial public opinion poll will not be used in the upcoming leadership election of the People Power Party (PPP), the successor of the GNP. In the party’s national convention on March 8, only party members are allowed to vote. The party based the decision on the “increase in party members and the change in demographics.” And yet, the reality is unbearable. Instead of the will needed to reform the party and a vision to win the next general election, what matters is close relationships with President Yoon Suk Yeol. A loyalty competition is embarrassing. Some even say that it does not matter who wins the chairmanship, as what really matters in parliamentary elections is the president.

The party has no plan to diversify its base of supporters. A former head of the fan club of the president’s wife and hardline conservative YouTube channel operators have joined the national convention. They may have a chance, when only the votes from party members are counted.

The PPP apparently has someone it counts on — Democratic Party (DP) Chair Lee Jae-myung, who faces a series of criminal risks. The PPP seems to be confident to win whatever elections as long as the DP is headed by Lee. But the public sentiment is not that simple. We have seen it from the DP’s humiliating fall.

Facing a weak rival, the liberal party won 180 seats in the 2020 parliamentary elections and wielded its unchallenged power. It arrogantly declared it will win presidential elections for the next 20 years, but it lost this year’s election to the PPP, which recruited Yoon Suk Yeol as its presidential candidate.

A crisis always comes after an opportunity, and then a new opportunity comes after a crisis. It takes only a second to travel between heaven and hell.