[Opinion] Muddy Primary Is the Anti-Constitutional Act

Millennium Democratic Party`s (MDP) `people`s primary` to elect its presidential candidate is a development in our politics.

Not only the beginning but also the process and result should be good. Beside MDP`s `people`s primary system,` there are many ways to decide a party`s presidential candidate through widely collecting party members` opinions. Therefore it is not necessary to imitate MDP`s primary system or to insist a perfunctory primary being aware of others` eyes.

If a party has a presidential candidate who gains wide support from the party and there is no contender, the party members can unanimously select the person as their presidential candidate without primary. It is definitely one of the democratic decision-making methods. In many cases, parties of the politically advanced countries unanimously select their candidates for the public office elections.

An example is that the Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), partner parties, selected their Prime Minister candidate for German federal parliamentary election, which is scheduled in coming September, by such a method. Merkel, the president of CDU, and Stoiber, the president of CSU, were considered as strong candidates for Prime Minister. But, receiving less public support, Merkel decided to concede the candidacy to Stoiber through their mutual agreement. The parties officially ratified their agreement. People cannot criticize this process as an anti-democratic method.

Democratic politics is the politics of agreement and fair play. It is an example of mature representative democratic politics that one can yield to a contender, people highly evaluate conceder`s difficult political decision, and both of them become winners.

Unfortunately, the present situation of our party-based democratic politics is far behind from that level. Apart from concession, fierce fights are taking place between candidates. The candidates are criticizing the others` for spreading money. Among the candidates who had participated in the race, more than half of them were resigned. Criticizing an invisible hand`s manipulation, a leading candidate has considered his resignation. But he announced that he is going to run the race to the end and will accept the result. It is better for our politics.

It is an anti-constitutional act of denying the basic frames of the party politics and the representative democratic politics that a party`s primary is conducted in a suspicion or a loser secedes and becomes a presidential candidate in a different party. Although final choice is the voters` at the presidential election, the essence of the party-based representative democratic politics is to give a choice to the voters on the candidates who were already examined through the parties` races. It reduces the peoples` risks on the candidates` policies and characters. A simple argument that voters do not need to vote for an unfavorable candidate might be a logic of the early representative politics before the introduction of the party-based politics, and it is a distorted logic that cannot fit into the party-based representative democratic politics.

Unlike the age when people only valued the results of elections, present party-based representative democratic politics is a political system that values the process of election and the result is decided by the fairness of the process. Because an election can be a moment of ruining peoples` ethical senses, the representative democratic politics is evaluated as the most difficult political system, which is based on the philosophy of ethical life. The politicians who lost their moral senses and the peoples` immoral behaviors in the election process directly weaken the foundation of the representative democracy.

In a liberal democratic nation, none of the politicians and people has the constitutional right to weaken the foundation of the representative democratic politics by losing ethical senses. Therefore, the political ethic is not a phenomenon outside of the law but the foundation of the representative democratic politics and the necessary condition to realize constitution.

Hur Young (Inviting Professor of Myungji University, Constitutional Law)