MDP convention to choose new leaders

Millennium Democratic Party delegates meet in a national convention on Wednesday at the gymnasium of Seoul Olympic Park to elect new party leadership to assist and bolster the administration of President Kim Dae-Jung, which entered into the second half of his term of office. The national conference of party delegates is scheduled to choose 7 members of the supreme committee, with the rest of the members, 5, to be appointed ex officio by President Kim. The convention is expected to pick the new party chairman from among the 12 supreme members.

It is probable that the incumbent chairman, Suh Young-Hoon, will be asked to remain in office. At the same time, speculation has it that another figure might be nominated to take over the chairmanship for the sake of overhauling the unfavorable image of the party, recently damaged by Yoon Chul-Sang, second deputy secretary general of the party, who indicated the possible implication of his party machine in peddling influence to the prosecution and the Natural Election Commission in dealing with underreporting of campaign financing.

There is hardly any alternative to replacing Chairman Suh at the moment, commented one party leader who refused to be named. However, he continued, many see the need for turning over a new leaf at this time by shaking up the higher echelon of the government party to ride out the alleged scandal and round off the remainder of the current term of the MDP government.