“Total Change of GNP’s National Constituency in General Election Next Year”

The Grand National Party leader, Choe Byung-yul, announced on November 3 that every GNP candidate for national constituency in next year’s 17th General Election, based on the system of proportional representation, would be replaced by new faces. Choe stressed that there would be no money nomination in any case, such as a donation for nominating or a large amount of party expenses, particularly on the nominations for national constituency.

Chairman Choe declared five main plans for political reform on Monday afternoon during a joint meeting with legislators and chairmen of district party chapter held in GNP’s head office in Yoido of Seoul.

The remark by Choe is expected to draw attention from now on, since this more than hints of an overall change in the nomination of national constituency process, it is likely to largely impact the nomination standard of local constituencies.

He said, “The current system of constituency chapter is called ‘a sponge of money’, which may result from the costly and inefficient political system. I am planning to abolish the constituency chapter system and change it to a local branch system accordingly to make a radical reform of supporter’s association system.”

Regarding the revision of Political Fund Law, Chairman Choe said, “The current law of political funds should be revised in a bid to prevent companies from offering contributions or political funds for any kind of legal or illegal cases.” Choe asserted that he will make a great effort to show a transparent status of the party’s income and expenditure on every political fund by using checks and credit cards.

Along with this plan, the GNP leader vowed to promote: abolition of the party’s speech session and joint-speech event, interdiction of accepting money for congratulations or condolences, ban on extensive party leadership meeting during the campaign period, and other plans for improving the structure of expensive elections.

A GNP senior vice spokesman, Eun Jin-su, said, “The proposal of Chairman Choe implies his strong will to root out the direct transactions of money from enterprises.” Eun added that more concrete supplementary measures would be discussed soon.

Yeon-Wook Jung jyw11@donga.com