Survey report inflames factional tensions within DP

Posters for candidates seeking party nominations to run in the April 10 general election cover the billboards outside a building in Uiwang, Gyeonggi, on Monday. [NEWS1]

Controversy is brewing within the liberal Democratic Party (DP) after several incidents critics interpret as signs that members not aligned with party leader Lee Jae-myung could be prevented from standing in the upcoming April general election.

On Monday, DP senior spokesman Kwon Chil-seung denied that the party had conducted a candidate approval survey that left out members of former President Moon Jae-in’s faction within the DP.

“Normally, all kinds of surveys take place during the nomination period,” Kwon told reporters at the National Assembly, adding that it’s “difficult to know whether such surveys were carried out by the party or other institutions.”

But party members not aligned with Lee have aired suspicions through various outlets that the survey was in part intended to “cut” them out of the party’s nomination list by gauging public favorability toward potential replacements.

Former presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok and Rep. Hong Young-pyo, both supporters of Moon, were among those left out of the survey in question.

A leaked, unconfirmed report that the DP’s senior leadership also recently held a closed-door meeting to discuss the possibility of excluding members who do not stand behind Lee from running as the party’s candidates has also inflamed tensions within the party.

Both Kwon and the party’s public relations office have denied that such a meeting took place.

Turmoil between the DP’s internal factions over the party’s nomination process has gradually mounted since September when an unknown but significant number of the party’s 167 lawmakers broke ranks to vote in favor of their leader’s arrest to face prosecution for charges of corruption, bribery and breach of trust stemming from his tenure as mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi.

Although the Seoul Central District Court later dismissed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant, members who support Lee have called for retribution against those they view as having betrayed the DP leader.

Han Dong-hoon, the interim leader of the conservative People Power Party (PPP), has seized on the ongoing tumult within the DP to strike a contrast between his own party and its rival, whose nomination process he likened to a “rough-and-tumble pandemonium” compared to the PPP’s “transparent” selection of candidates.

“One cannot find the will of the people being reflected in any of these insidious back alley deals,” Han said at a meeting of the PPP’s emergency steering committee on Monday, adding that the DP’s way of fielding candidates “is a form of politics that betrays the public interest.”

Han also criticized the DP’s decision to ally with the minor Progressive Party, which he characterized as the successor to the Unified Progressive Party (UPP).

The UPP was disbanded by the Constitutional Court in 2014 after several of its members were convicted of plotting an insurrection to aid North Korea in the event of armed hostilities.

Meanwhile, the recently established New Reform Party (NRP) is experiencing a power struggle between its co-chairs.

The NRP was formed by the merger of splinter parties created by former PPP leader Lee Jun-seok, whose membership in the main conservative party was suspended over a sex scandal, and former prime minister Lee Nak-yon, who quit the DP out of dissatisfaction with Lee Jae-myung’s leadership.

According to local media reports, the latter walked out of an NRP leadership meeting on Monday after Lee Jun-seok was assigned the responsibility of overseeing the party’s election campaign and political agenda.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]