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No reinvention, no hope

Published: 29 Dec. 2024, 19:44

Kim Jung-ha
The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Let’s briefly revisit 2020. The main conservative party — then called United Future Party — was deemed beyond resurrection after suffering its third consecutive crushing defeat in the parliamentary election following the losses in local elections in 2018 and snap presidential election in the prior year as the wake of an impeachment of its president. Liberal president Moon Jae-in was enjoying a comfortable approval rating in the range of 50 to 60 percent. Democratic Party (DP) members walked with a haughty stride, joking about remaining in power for next 20 to 50 years. The conservative front was the sad opposite without any formidable candidate to field for the next presidency. Few imagined at the time the party would rise to produce a president just two years later.

But the unthinkable did happen. The overreaching ways of the Moon Jae-in government backed by legislative majority backfired. Kudos also went to the humbled conservative party which strived to appeal to the centrist base.

The party recruited reform-minded Kim Chong-in as its interim head and changed its name to People Power Party (PPP). In the party convention of 2021, 30-something Lee Jun-seok was elected to leadership, raising expectations that the conservative party was finally shedding its old-school practices and norms. The party received a decisive image boost after it snatched up Yoon Suk Yeol, the star of the Moon Jae-in term for indicting former presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak and going after the sitting president, as soon as he resigned as chief prosecutor. The determination to regain power muffled past ill-feelings towards the very figure who precipitated the downfall of the conservative camp. We won’t delve into an evaluation of the Yoon Suk Yeol government, because the purpose of this recount is to emphasize the importance of engaging centrist voters to achieve power.

The conservative front is faced with another presidential impeachment, and instead of returning to its winning playbook, the PPP is doing the exact opposite. Its initial demoralization at the president’s baffling martial-law stunt is understandable. But by now, it should have recovered and be working towards a wise way out of the impeachment crisis. But somehow the party is acting as if it is ready to jump off the cliff alongside the president. Unless anyone in the party had colluded in the plot, the party bears no legal — only moral — liability in the disastrous event. If it had any sense, the party should completely cut off the president and carve out an independent image. But it remains crouched in its helpless inertia.

Whether it wishes to admit it or not, the PPP also should ready itself for the probability of a snap election. DP leader Lee Jae-myung leads the polls among aspiring presidential candidates. But there are plenty of voters who dislike Lee as much as they do Yoon. How will the party appeal to centrists in the face of an early presidential election? The DP is bound to bundle the PPP as Yoon’s insurgent pack. If former PPP leader Han Dong-hoon had not convinced some of its members to vote against the presidential decree on martial law, the party too could have faced criminal charges for colluding in the insurrection attempt.

The bigwigs of Yeongnam (traditional conservative stronghold) call upon the party to focus on 20 percent of the population who oppose Yoon’s impeachment. But that idea cannot work under a de facto two-party system in Korea and merely sets the party to a sure opposition position. Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo argues there is still a chance of sustaining power with 90 legislative seats like former president Kim Dae-jung who won presidency despite his party having just 79 seats. But Hong is just half-right. His minority party was able to win the presidency because Kim reached out to his longstanding political rival Kim Jong-pil to form a coalition. In today’s context, PPP would have to reach out to the minority faction of former loyalists of Moon who were abandoned by Lee Jae-myung’s party. But such bold maneuvering would be far beyond the imagination of a party content with its 20-percent diehard conservatives.

Whether it is right or left, a party giving up the bigger center has no chance of winning governing power. Those who saved the conservative party under the lordly Moon Jae-in administration were not the big leaguers, but new faces appealing to centrist voters. They are PPP’s saviors. The party is doomed if it settles for the comfort zone.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.