[Editorial] Rhee`s preposterous stand: "I`m the only alternative"

Ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) Supreme Council member Rhee In-Je must have excessive self-confidence in his potential to win popular support, if not illusions about it. Otherwise, how could he be so pompous and audacious as to say that ``all of us will meet unfortunate circumstances, should he not become the party's Presidential candidate.'' Rhee elaborated the statements to mean that no Presidential aspirant can win power if he has only the party's backing while lacking any wide popular support.

No matter how he may interpret his statements, we have serious reservations about them. Of our most profound concern here is his conceited mindset to think that only he alone, and no other person, can become the party's indispensable candidate for the presidential race. To be sure, any person with such an undemocratic thinking and mentality can hardly be regarded as a suitable person to assume the leadership for our future generations.

A critical examination is required of his concept of popular support as the prerequisite for the nomination of a presidential candidate. Clearly, lawmaker Rhee has the illusion to think that he commands more popular support than the MDP's other presidential hopefuls, just because he is better known among the people than them. Being well-known does necessarily mean being most liked or favored. Rhee's self-serving interpretation here will only serve to perpetuate a lowly form of self-aggrandizement or symbol manipulations to manufacture misguided mass popularity which is often misleadingly sought in the disguise of the people's sake.

Nor can we agree with his politically motivated assumption to warn of the possibility that a person only with the MDP's intra-party backing but no popular support may win the ruling MDP's presidential nomination, aiming at nothing other than the retaining of ruling power. As he knows well, every party has its own rules and procedures to elect its presidential candidate by its members and their support. Party members' support is bound to reflect popular support as well.

Rhee's statements have strong undemocratic underpinnings and insinuate that he may not accept the party's decision if he should lose the party's nomination, since he considers himself the only viable candidate with more popular support than others. This can be taken as a quasi-threat on his part to ignore the basic principles of democracy as well as party politics.

Even if his unfounded warnings become reality, so that the MDP nominates a person with no popular support as its presidential candidate, the nation's electorates will render a verdict on the decision. Moreover, a candidate can always withdraw from the nomination campaign or leave the party if he finds the nomination process or the competition unfair and unjust. But, he must respect the party's decision once he loses the nomination after having fully participated in the competition until its finish. If he refuses to accept the decision afterwards in the pretext of his assumed popular support, he is totally abandoning the democratic modus vivendi here.

Moreover, we should like to remind lawmaker Rhee of his undesirable precedent that he left in the past the then ruling party during the last presidential election, just because he failed to secure the party's presidential nomination. He must be conscious of his `political sin' to break his repeated promise to us to honor the party's nomination decision. He must not forget that he is not free from such an `original sin.'