MDP leadership contest

One characteristic of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party`s leadership contest is the disappearance of factional boundaries between intra-party mainstreamers and non-mainstream groups. This is because Rep. Han Hwa-Kap, a non-mainstream aspirant, is running for the membership of the MDP supreme council, which represents the Tonggyo-dong faction.

Many Tongyo faction followers appear to have more amicable feelings toward Rep. Ahn Tong-Sun, who belongs to the pan-Tonggyo faction, than Rep. Han. In addition, with the formal bids for supreme membership by such non-mainstreamers as Reps. Chyung Dai-Churl and Kim Keun-Tae, the existence of former non-mainstream factions has virtually ended.

There is no clear distinction of factions for other self-announced candidates for the party ruling council, namely, Reps. Chung Dong-young, Choo Mi-Ae and Kim Min-Sok, who are all young and reform-minded. What`s more, the factional boundary has become ambiguous, as Rep. Park Sang-Cheon, a mainstream candidate, unleashed a severe criticism of the party leadership`s enervation.

MDP officials observed that the party has entered a new process of factional alignment and formation, `casting off the concepts of the past factional groups, mainstream and non-mainstream factions or Tonggyo or non-Tongyo factions.