“No Condoning over Illegal Campaign”

As the Civic Coalition for 2004 General Election on April 6 unveiled a list of 216 figures that they will campaign against in the run-up to the coming election, opposition parties and the concerned are showing a repulsive attitude.

At the press conference held on Tuesday at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, the civil coalition announced that it blacklisted 108 figures based on corruption, outlaws of election laws, and morality; 100 for the reason of supporting the impeachment move, and eight for their unfitness in the system of proportional representation.

Upon the gesture of the civic group, the National Election Commission (NEC) said that it would take a hard line scrutinizing over any activities about whether the election campaign aiming at candidates to fail derails from the election laws such as a gathering or petition.

Besides the 100 figures who were listed for supporting the impeachment move, the remaining 108 is composed of 32 from the Grand National Party, 29 from the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), 21 from the United Liberal Democrats, 10 from the Uri Party, 17 independents, 1 from Democratic Labor Party, and 1 from the Nation Unification 21.

The civic group’s announcement of “We unveil the final blacklist figures today and start the full-swing campaign against them” at the press conference is expected to create tension with the NEC and judicial authorities.

“Unveiling the list of figures they campaigned against is not illegal, but if any of the following actions are discovered during the campaign-- gathering, petition, hanging banner, street marching, and commercials-- it will be the subject of punishment,” said Kim Ho-yeol, the head of the election administration.

On Tuesday, Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye said, “Just as there are people who are against the impeachment motion, there are definitely people for it. I doubt how fair the civic group’s candidates screening standards are.”

“The announcement of the civic coalition clearly tells us that the organization is the functional organization of the Uri Party,” blamed the representative of MDP’s election polling committee, Jang Jeong-hyung.

Park Young-sun, the spokesperson of the Uri Party, said, “I see that the nation will make a historic judgment on April 15. It is a natural result to see the lawmakers who supported the impeachment motion were included in the blacklist.”

Young-Chan Yoon yyc11@donga.com