The ruling Saenuri Party will select its candidates for the April by-elections through opinion polls, party chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung said Tuesday.

Kim also said that the candidates, who will run for the three National Assembly seats vacated by former lawmakers of the dissolved Unified Progressive Party, will be selected by the end of January.

“Candidates will be nominated according to the wishes of the residents, based 100 percent on opinion polls,” Kim said at a year-end meeting with the media on Tuesday.

Reiterating his pledge to reduce the power wielded by the party chairman, Kim also said that the chiefs of the party’s regional organizations will be selected based on survey results.

“Everything (regarding regional committee chief selection) will be decided by surveys. I have no part (in the process). I think that selecting committee chiefs and candidate nominations are the same processes.”

According to Rep. Kang Seok-ho, deputy secretary-general of the party, two candidates for each regional committee will be selected on Wednesday. The party will then conduct surveys to choose the regional committee chiefs.

As Kim announced his plans, members of the pro-Park Geun-hye faction gathered for a year-end lunch, raising speculations that the faction may be readying to take a bigger role in the running of the party. 

However, the faction members, who have joined forces under the banner of “forum for increasing the national competitiveness,” refuted such speculations, saying that the meeting had long been planned to mark the end of a year.

With Kim taking the party leadership in July, the pro-Park faction, led by seven-term lawmaker Rep. Suh Chung-won, has been overshadowed by the non-mainstreamers.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)