Won Hee-ryong declares his presidential bid

Jeju Governor Won Hee-ryong of the People Power Party declared Sunday his presidential bid as a candidate to “undo everything done under the Moon Jae-in administration.”

“The People Power Party is the opposition candidate and party in the presidential election,” he said in a press conference broadcasted on his YouTube channel ‘Won Hee-ryong TV’ on the same day. “We shouldn’t pick the candidates who failed in the last election again. We need to fight with the cleanest, youngest and most innovative candidate.”

He set forth the ‘Audacious Recovery Project’ worth 100 trillion won as his core election pledge. “I will provide 50 trillion won to small business owners who took losses because of the pandemic on my first year in the office,” he said. “I will allocate 10 trillion won every year for five years.” He dismissed the ‘small government theory’ suggested within his party, saying, “The government will proactively support the socially vulnerable class that suffered in the shade of economic growth in various sectors such as housing, education and employment.

“The final candidate from the opposition side would be either me or the former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol,” he said. “The final candidate of our party is me. I have advantages over former lawmaker Yoo Seung-min in terms of the legitimacy of conservatism and Hong Jun-pyo in terms of expandability to centrists.”

“Yoon is the person who ignited the flame of regime change all alone against the pressure of the Moon Jae-in administration,” he said about the tension between the party leader Lee Jun-seok and Yoon on whether to join the party. “It is not desirable for the opposition camp to oshake him.”

“I will wrap up things after we overcome the COVID-19 crisis and set up the firm control system for Jeju’s administration,” he said about the timing of his resignation. He appointed former three-term lawmaker Kim Yong-tae as the head of his election camp.


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