Arbitrary constituency changes betray voters

The People Power Party (PPP)’s move to change its lawmakers’ current constituencies ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections is going overboard. Following its earlier decision to pressure a legislator representing a district in Busan to run in another district in the city — and another lawmaker to change his constituency in South Gyeongsang — the governing party makes the same decision for two other lawmakers. The PPP is even considering changing the district of former Rep. Kim Sung-tae to a nearby district after he failed to get nominated. The party described it as a “strategic redeployment of competitive candidates to tough battlegrounds” to grab more seats in the legislature.

Despite the relative lack of noise over the nomination process, the PPP’s reckless changes in constituencies sound alarms. First of all, such a practice betrays voters in their current constituencies. The voters will be embarrassed about the abrupt shift, as they voted for their representatives. The same embarrassment applies to those lawmakers themselves, as they have to change their localized campaign strategies. Such a shift cannot help incumbent lawmakers devote themselves to their original constituencies. In the past, legislators who habitually changed their party affiliations only to get nominations were called “migratory birds.”

The PPP, a minority, clearly wants to block its members, who failed to get nominations, from running in the election independently or joining a third party. On Thursday, the party said that its lawmakers who changed their constituency will be excluded from the “cutoff,” which applies to legislators with the bottom 10 percent scores in the party’s evaluation of their past four-year performance as lawmakers. In other words, as long as you change your constituency at the pressure from the party, you can avoid the cutoff.

PPP interim leader Han Dong-hoon said, “If the press criticizes us for lacking refreshing elements, not for making noises, that represents the media’s appreciation of our effort. Of course, the party’s crusade to not give special favors to candidates close to President Yoon Suk Yeol deserves praise. But the country adopted the single-member district system that cherishes each lawmaker representing their constituency. Such weird redeployments are not seen in advanced democracies.

Former U.S. House speaker Thomas O’Neil famously said, “All politics is local.” Lawmakers’ activities on the central political stage are important, but what matters is their ability to care for their own districts. That’s the starting line for politics.