Ruling Side To Preserve Number of Congresspersons elected by National Constituency

The ruling New Millennium Democratic Party decided its plans for the electoral law amendment that introduce the `one person, two vote` system to choose a supporting party and maintain the total number of congressperson and the ratio of the proportional constituencies and the local constituencies.

According to Rep. Kim Min-Seok, the secretary of the special committee for the political reformation of NMDP, the committee had considered to reduce the number of the local constituencies rather than to increase the number of the proportional constituencies. However, as for the reasons of the protests from the local constituencies and the weakening of the local representativeness, the final plans ended up with the same ratio.

NMDP decided to introduce the `1 person, 2 vote` system before the local election next year and to maintain the proportional representative congresspersons in the local governments to guarantee the chances for women and the occupational representatives.

NMDP, however, will not allow one candidate to run for the local and proportional constituencies at the same time.

The deposit for the presidential election and the large-region local election will maintain current 500 million won for the presidential election and 50 million won for the local governors. But NMDP is planning to reduce the deposit for the National Assembly candidacy from 20 million won to 10 million won, for the local government from 15 million won to 8 million won, for the large-regional congresspersons from 4 million to 3 million, and local congressperson from 2 million to 1 million. And the criteria for the return of deposit will be lowered from the current 20 percent of vote collection to 10 percent.

However, NMDP has not reached an agreement whether to list the proportional representatives in the national level or the large-area level, to promote the small parties entry to the National Assembly and to ease the regional separation.

Yoon Jong-Koo jkmas@donga.com