Representation system is not fixed yet

With less than three months left until the April 10 parliamentary elections, confusion sweeps over how to assign proportional representative seats to political parties. Rep. Hong Ik-pyo, floor leader of the majority Democratic Party (DP), mentioned the need to maintain the current system if no agreement is reached over the volatile issue. On Monday, he presented the idea of assigning a half of the 47 proportional seats in the 300-member legislature to political parties according to the rate of votes they earned and assigning the other half by linking the rate of votes they earned to the election results in their constituencies.

Small parties, including the Basic Income Party, proposed that the DP “jointly establish a satellite coalition party to get more proportional seats” in the National Assembly. In response, the DP floor leader said it was an idea worth considering if satellite parties cannot be abolished. Rep. Woo Won-shik, a four-term lawmaker of the DP, publicly endorsed the proposal from the splinter party. Our strange election system is going in a stranger direction.

The current proportional representation system was jointly approved by then-ruling DP and splinter parties in the last parliamentary elections four years ago to give more seats to minor parties. At that time, the Liberty Korea Party — the predecessor of the governing People Power Party (PPP) — was excluded in the debate from the start. But the discussion ended with the utterly complex way of calculating the number of proportional seats. In particular, the more seats a party won in elections in constituencies, the fewer proportional seats were assigned to a party. The weird election system brought about a number of minor parties seeking proportional seats only.

If the current proportional representation continues, it will certainly lead to the election of many substandard lawmakers as seen in the past. But the DP has been laid back. Its leader Lee Jae-myung even reversed his earlier promise to end the creation of satellite parties to take the proportional seats. The DP head now supports the suggestion the floor leader made on Monday. In that case, former Justice Minister Cho Kuk can help the DP increase the number of its seats by creating a satellite party of his own.

But the responsibility for all the mess should be borne by the PPP, too. The governing party even dilly-dallies on presenting its own proposal for fixing constituencies. The current system benefits incumbent legislators more than political novices. The two major parties must swiftly fix the proportional representation system and the electoral districts. The voters will not cast ballots for politicians engrossed in political gimmicks for election victory only.