The main opposition Democratic United Party suffers from a double whammy of an internal feud of primary voting and growing corruption suspicions involving its floor leader.

The underdog candidates in its presidential primaries have complained that the mobile voting system was flawed, delivering a blow to the leadership already hit by allegations that Rep. Park Jie-won took bribes from savings bank executives.

Sohn Hak-kyu and Kim Doo-kwan claimed on Wednesday that 3,653 voters were denied their voting opportunities in Jeju and Ulsan late last month.

The two candidates thus urged the leadership to suspend the mobile vote and its ballot counting, starting from the South Jeolla primary on Thursday. They also demanded that the leadership officially apologize and election committee chairman Lim Chae-jung resign.

According to the party regulations, the automated system is supposed to make up to five calls until the voter responds.

Sohn and Kim claim that 21.1 percent of the Jeju mobile voters did not receive as many calls as required and that 122 of them were never contacted at all.

An official of Kim’s election camp claimed that the omission was a critical flaw in the party’s voting legitimacy and a deprivation of the people’s voting rights.

“The system did make the required number of calls, though in some cases, the voter failed to take it due to reception errors,” said party spokesperson Park Yong-jin on Thursday.

Some observers, however, took the backlash as an attempt to find fault with the ongoing primary and to drag down the polls of frontrunner Moon.

The former presidential aide kept his lead by winning 48.5 percent of the votes in the South Jeolla primary on Thursday, recording his eighth consecutive victory.

He may, however, possibly face a runoff election as his average polls yet remained under 50 percent.

The ongoing mobile voting feuds affected the reputation of party chief Lee Hae-chan, especially as he was repeatedly blamed for siding with Rep. Moon.

When Lee did not participate in the heated South Gyeongsang primary on Tuesday, citing his preparation for the parliamentary speech on Wednesday, observers suspected him of dodging the party members’ protest.

“In order to settle the situations, Rep. Lee should publicly present an official report on the disputed mobile votes,” said Rep. Kang Gi-jung, member of the Supreme Council.

Also, some reformist members of the party started to gather signatures on Thursday to summon an urgent party meeting next week.

“The meeting is to promote communication within the party,” said Rep. Kim Dong-cheol.

Amid such internal discord, the DUP is also to defend itself from the prosecution’s claim that floor leader Park had offered illicit favors to the bankrupt Bohae Savings Bank after receiving a cash bribe from Bohae Brewery chief Lim Kun-woo.

The Supreme Prosecutor’s Office savings bank investigation team has secured the corresponding witness testimony and is planning to file for an arrest warrant as early as next week, according to officials.

This is not the first bribery accusation which Park had to face in the current parliamentary term but the DUP has consistently blamed the prosecution for launching a political offensive against the opposition camp.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)