Effectiveness of GNP Hearings Questioned

The candidates of Grand National Party (GNP)’s presidential nomination are expected to obtain many chances to appeal their political orientations this month because a number of hearings and policy debates have been scheduled ahead of the party’s nomination.

The Campaign Headquarters for Genuine Politics is holding a “GNP Policy and Public Pledge Review” on March 8; the “Choseon Society,” organized by newly elected GNP lawmakers, plans to sponsor a “GNP Presidential Hopeful Political View Speech”; and GNP leaders are preparing hearings. Meanwhile, the “Jungsim Society,” a group of GNP members, has suggested that the party play a central role in examining candidate qualifications.

In the “GNP Policy and Public Pledge Review,” experts will be invited to make presentations for the evaluation of the GNP’s past public pledges, and to review their current pledges.

Regarding this, candidates announced different responses. While former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak showed support for discussions, he doubted the effectiveness of hearings. This is because, he argued, hearings are very likely to degenerate into unproductive quarrels unless an effective process that helps check candidate qualifications is presented.

Cho Hae-jin, a press assistant of Lee, said yesterday that, “If the party’s committee decides to hold the hearings, we will follow their decision,” adding, “However, we are still skeptical about how much they will help in checking the qualification of candidates.”

Meanwhile, former GNP chairwoman Park Geun-hye claimed that the party should play a central role in organizing hearings as well as test candidate morality and proposed policies.

Han Sun-kyo, a spokesman of Park Geun-hye, said that, “While there have been many surveys on support for candidates, few have addressed candidate qualifications and their proposed policies,” adding, “Even though it is very late to stress the importance of policy evaluations and qualifications, Park is fully ready to cooperate and accept the results of the party’s examinations.”

Former Gyeonggi province governor Sohn Hak-kyu, however, pointed out that it will be better to decide whether to hold the hearings or not when the methods and timing for the selection of the GNP’s presidential candidate are discussed.

Park Jong-hee, a senior secretary for Sohn, said that, “Rather than focusing on an agreement defining race rules, we should expand the subcommittee established to check candidate qualifications under a GNP preparation committee to a special body by inviting external experts and going though examinations on quality as is done in National Assembly hearings.”

There are clearly different views on how much hearings and policy debates can contribute to the examination of a candidate’s qualifications.

Those who show support argue that it is historically meaningful for a political party to play a leading role in operating the examination process of its candidates. If the party maintains its central role, negative political quarrels among candidates will rarely take place.

However, those who oppose this stress that even though scheduled policy debates and hearings largely deal with the content of candidates’ policies, they are very likely to engender political quarrels, particularly when political schemes to endanger other candidates by attacking their qualifications are still ongoing even today.