Ruling and opposition leaders to discuss how to change General Election rules

Ruling and opposition party leaders plan to have a meeting during Chuseok holidays to decide how to change the rules of General Election scheduled in April, next year. If the meeting is held, major agenda will be how to introduce the open primary, the nomination system, and the regional proportional representation system, the election system.

Ruling Saenuri party chairman Kim Moo-sung puts his political life at stake for introduction of the open primary system. New Politics Alliance for Democracy(NPAD) chairman Moon Jae-in stresses the regional proportional representation system. This is why politics insiders predict that there will be a big-deal discussion on this issue.

NPAD chairman Moon said to reporters on Sep. 25, “Open primary system is to reflect the will of the public in the process of nomination. The regional proportional representation system is to reflect the will of the public to the election result. The system was proposed not just by the NPAD but also by the Central Election Management Commission. Both systems need to be introduced at the same time. The best loser system can be considered along with the regional representation system.” Chairman Moon revealed his willingness to put the agenda of introduction of the best loser system to the negotiation table with the ruling party chairman.

The best loser system is to elect the candidate, who had the highest votes among candidates who lost in the local constituency election, as the proportional representation lawmaker. Ruling Saenuri adopted this. NPAD shares the necessity to introduce the system as a part of an effort to mitigate the regionalism.

However, NPAD already decided to strategically nominate candidates for 20% of the local constituencies. This is where the opposition party conflicts with the ruling party, which insists to have the open primary for both opposition and ruling parties in all constituencies at the same time. This is the reason why it is hard to reach a compromise over the open primary system.

The number of seats for local constituencies and regional representation is likely to be discussed. Chairman Kim argues to increase the seats for local constituencies, if necessary, by reducing the seats for proportional representation (currently 54 seats) to minimize the number of rural constituencies that are expected to be integrated. Chairman Moon emphasizes maintaining the current number of seats for proportional representation. However, opposition party lawmakers based on rural constituencies strongly call for introduction of the special constituency system for rural areas. If Chairman Moon doesn’t accept this, a negative repercussion is expected to take place inside the opposition party.

sungho@donga.com