Grand National Party chief Park Geun-hye on Tuesday hinted at a sweeping change of rules in the ruling party’s nomination of candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

“All members of the GNP, including me, will have to give up all their vested rights in the process,” the female politician said in a radio address.

“I don’t think that we could regain trust from voters through superficial reforms. We have to change not just the package, but the content, and end old-time politics once and for all.”

The remarks came as the party’s emergency leadership council pushes to formulate a set of new rules based on which the party will select its candidates for the April 11 vote.

Local media reported Tuesday that the leaders are studying a proposal that would drop unpopular incumbents from its list of potential candidates. Incumbent lawmakers whose approval ratings are more than 5 percentage points below that of the party could get the axe, they said. The party is to administer polls later this month for that purpose, they said.

Rep. Hwang Yeong-chul, the party’s spokesperson, however, denied the reports.

“Such a plan was never discussed (within the council), nor was it reported or proposed to the council,” he told reporters Tuesday. 

Rep. Park and other members of the council are pushing for drastic reforms in order to rescue the ruling party and eke out a victory in the general elections.

Their reform drive sparked party in-fighting.

Two key members of the leadership called for old-guard members and those close to President Lee Myung-bak to give up running in the general elections, claiming that they should take responsibility for the trouble that the GNP is in. The pro-Lee faction fired back, demanding the two councilors be ousted.

News media polls released earlier in the week revealed a widespread anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, which the liberal opposition is benefiting from. In one of the surveys, candidates of the main opposition Democratic Unified Party were seen crushing GNP candidates in all provinces and cities, except Rep. Park’s home turf of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province.

The parliamentary vote is widely expected to affect the ensuing presidential race at the end of the year. Park, considered the conservatives’ best shot at the presidency, is trailing Ahn Cheol-soo, a venture entrepreneur-turned professor, in polls. 


By Lee Sun-young
(milaya@heraldcorp.com)