MDP Continues Infighting Ahead of Elections

The dispute over the nomination for party candidate between Chairman Chough Soon-hyung and electoral campaign manager Chu Mi-ae continues to engulf the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP).

The conflict appears to reach another level as different candidates who were respectively nominated by Chough and Chu will attempt to get registered for their candidacy on the MDP ticket in the same electoral district. The same picture will likely repeat when candidates are registered for non-contested seats assigned in proportion to the vote the party wins in the elections.

The MDP campaign headquarters, led by Chu, has announced a list of its 40 non-contested candidates, with Son Bong-sook, who jointly manages the campaign with Chu, on the top, and Kim Jong-in, former presidential economic advisor, in the second slot. It attempted to get registered on the list with the National Election Commission.

However, Chough said at a meeting of the Emergency Committee which he launched a day earlier, “The list of candidates for proportional seats that was announced today is invalid because there was no agreement between Chu and myself about it.”

Earlier, Chough visited the National Election Commission (NEC) to file for the change of the party seal the MDP has registered with the election watchdog.

Park Sang-cheon, Kim Ok-doo, Yoo Yong-tae, and Choi Jae-sung, the four MDP members whose party nominations were canceled by Chu, received nomination certifications from Chough and registered their candidacies with the NEC.

The MDP campaign headquarters filed a motion with the NEC for the cancellation of the four’s candidacies. It also instructed two candidates, Park Joon-young, former presidential spokesperson, and Lee Han-soo, spokesman for the party’s Jeonbuk district, to get registered for their candidacies in the districts once assigned by the MDP for two of the four party old guards.

The NEC held a meeting to rule on the validity of the MDP list of non-contested candidates and the legality of the MDP candidacies filed for by two MDP members in the same districts.

Sung-Won Park swpark@donga.com