Parties Proclaim Their General Election Goals

With only two months left before the April 15 general election, each party is quickening their pace towards the election while restructuring their parties to election campaign centers.

The Grand National Party (GNP) is setting its sights on retaining its leading party status within the assembly. They are striving to occupy 120 seats while maintaining the three-party structure and profiting from dispersed supporters between the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) and the Uri Party.

Simultaneously, they are establishing strategies to gain national support as an “alternative party” away from their corrupted image and the “truck-load cash scandal” with party level reforms in an effort to show that they are reconstructing the party. However, recent controversies within the party in regard to the resignation of Chairman Choe Byung-ryol are discouraging to the party’s collective efforts. The leading representatives of the party deny the possibility of his resignation, but young representatives are insisting that Park Keum-hye and Oh Seh-hoon should front-lead the party’s election efforts.

The MDP sets its goal in maintaining its status as the second-major party in the Assembly, surpassing the Uri Party. Secretary General Kang Woon-tae said, “The coming election will pit the corrupted against the uncorrupted face-to-face. We’ve set our goal to occupy 90 seats in the regional districts.”

The party will keep to the “betrayal theory” and sweep over the Honam area while winning 40 seats in the metropolitan area with their image as a clean party against corruption and as an economic party for the good of the economy and people’s lives. Their headliners will either be Rep. Cho Soon-hyung and Rep. Choo Mi-ae together, or a single leading candidate consisting of Rep. Choo alone

Uri Party Chairman Chung Dong-young said in a press interview on February 15 that “our party’s aim is to become the leading party by occupying at least 100 seats” and added, “If I become ambitious enough, I’d like to have our party occupy more than half of the seats in the Assembly.” The atmosphere is encouraging with the increase of Youngnam support in the polls. Head of General Election Planning Committee Kim Han-kil said, “We aim to win evenhandedly all around the nation.”

Using the confrontational slogan of “New Politics against Old Politics,” they will attempt to label the GNP and the MDP as “Old Politics.” It is almost certain that Chairman Chung will be heading their election campaign center. Also, the United Liberal Democrats will amass old-time conservatives and their Chungcheong supporters against the current government’s popularity hunt, aiming to win 20 seats in the Assembly.