The presidential election campaign is heating up as the two major candidates ― Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party and Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party ― scramble to take an early lead in the race.
The two contenders launched their official campaigns on Nov. 27 after registering their candidacy with the National Election Commission. Besides the two, five more people have thrown their hats into the ring, but their bids are unlikely to matter much.
The initial campaigns of the two frontrunners are characterized by two aspects ― efforts to woo the backers of independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo and a reliance on negative campaigning.
Ahn withdrew from the race last Friday, declaring Moon as the standard bearer of the opposition camp. Then he called on his followers to shift allegiance to the DUP candidate.
Yet many of his supporters remain undecided. According to reports, only half of Ahn’s followers switched support to Moon. As a result, the proportion of swing voters increased substantially following Ahn’s resignation.
Given the tight race between Park and Moon, it is only natural for both sides to scramble to lure former Ahn supporters. Yet this involves an about-face in their attitude toward Ahn.
Until only last week, the Saenuri Party heaped criticism on the independent candidate for attempting to grab power without accumulating any political experience or credentials.
It also dismissed Ahn’s call for political reform as naive and unrealistic. Now, Park’s campaign team praises him for his commitment to political reform and vows to embrace his reform plans as they reflect the people’s aspirations for a new politics.
Moon’s campaign team is more desperate to woo Ahn and his backers as opinion polls taken after the former professor’s resignation show Moon trailing Park.
The DUP is extremely careful not to ruffle the feathers of Ahn’s followers as many of them resent Moon’s refusal to make concessions during the negotiations on single candidacy.
We recognize the need for the two parties to try to attract Ahn’s followers. But it is unseemly for them to criticize Ahn one day and praise him the next day just to win them over.
Political parties need to behave flexibly. But at the same time, they need to maintain integrity and adhere to the values they champion. To act too opportunistically is no recipe for winning an election.
The two key candidates’ campaigns are also marked by attempts to win an advantage by focusing on negative aspects of their opponents.
In her first stump speech, Park called Moon “the eminence grise of a failed administration,” a reference to his stint as chief of staff to President Roh Moo-hyun.
She also suggested that Moon was responsible for policy failures of the Roh administration, which resulted in deepened economic polarization, sky-high real estate prices and a steep rise in college tuition fees.
Moon also sought to highlight Park’s past as the daughter of a military dictator. He wondered how “the representative of the remnants of a dictatorship” could run a democratic country.
He defined this election as “a competition between old and new politics, between a people’s candidate and an aristocratic one, between a president who reigns over the people and a president who interacts with the people.”
Focusing on an opponent’s past is necessary as part of the vetting process. But the two candidates should not be fixated on the past; they should also be looking to the future.
A presidential election is a process to choose a leader based on his or her plans to govern and lead. Therefore, the two candidates should stop mudslinging and concentrate more on debating visions and policies. This will help voters make the right decision.
