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Saenuri chief pledges to root "open primary system"

Posted August. 21, 2015 07:15,   

한국어

“I will risk my political life in having an open primary system take root in Korea,” Rep. Kim Moo-sung of Saenuri Party said on Thursday. “It would be the definitive edition of Korean politics.”

At the meeting with reporters after Supreme Council talk, he stressed that “It seems those who wish to shake the ground for the open primary system try to get in the way. When some 70 percent of people in the country support to give the voting right to Koreans in selecting candidates, why would I give up? We need a by-partisan consensus between the ruling and opposition parties to adopt a law. If the consensus can’t be reached, we could take measures as necessary.”

Rep. Moon Jae-in of New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) has openly rejected to the open primary system that Rep. Kim has suggested. NPAD’s Innovation Council has announced its principle that “the bottom 20 percent of incumbent lawmakers would be excluded from candidate pool,” implying a possible reshuffle. For this reason, Rep. Kim’s open primary system would hardly be adopted by the mutual agreement between the two parties, which has made pro-Park (pro-Park Geun-hye) faction in the Saenuri Party be skeptical to the system itself. All these seem to have prodded Rep. Kim to say that he is risking “his political career” for the matter.

It is said that Rep. Kim has applied the brake on other lawmakers’ negative responses to the introduction of the system at meetings by saying that “Don’t let down.” The task force team for the open primary system in the party has recently begun to make an aggressive review on the proposal that the Saenuri Party alone would implement the system if the two parties fail to reach a consensus. In the long run, the party is said to have a plan to raise an issue that “the open primary system allows the nation to select candidates for the election”, contesting to the opposition party in the frame of “the party who wants reform and the one who doesn’t”

“We are now studying ways to prevent adverse selection in which the opposition party supporters cast their ballots on purpose to less popular candidate when the ruling party alone implements the system,” key sources of the party said. “We are not trying to increase the portion of pubic survey in pre-election; we are trying to come up with the measure that is closest to the de facto open primary system.”

The working level sees that many issues should be considered since the party would not be able to get financial support from the government if it implements the system alone. “Public Official Election Act needs to be amended in a way that the cost for conducting the open primary by a single party can be reimbursed if the bipartisan agreement can’t be gained in the special committee for political reform,” said other sources from the party.



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