Park Hee-tae Elected New GNP Chairman

Former Vice National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae was elected chairman of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) yesterday.

He was elected to take the helm of the ruling GNP for two years at the party’s 10th national convention held at Seoul’s Olympic Park yesterday. According to the voting results, which included votes from party delegates and results of opinion polls, he won 6,129 votes (29.7 percent), followed by Rep. Chung Mong-joon with 5,287 votes (25.6 percent).

Park, as a party outsider, lost the lead to Chung in the opinion polls by 1,031, but finally won the chairman post at the delegate contest by 1,873 votes.

At the convention, five members of the party’s decision-making Supreme Council including Park were elected. The others are Reps. Chung, Huh Tae-yeol, Gong Sung-jin and Park Soon-ja.

Huh received 3,284 votes (15.9 percent), while Gong won 2,589 votes (12.5 percent). Although Rep. Kim Sung-jo secured the fifth place with 2,454 votes (11.9 percent), Park Soon-ja, the only female candidate, became a member of the council automatically, as the convention rules require at least one slot on the council be allocated to a woman.

Some 7,554 out of 9,281 delegates participated in the GNP leadership votes. The voting, along with the opinion poll, was reflected to the final result at the ratio of seven to three. Besides the five elected members, GNP floor leader Hong Joon-pyo, GNP policy chair Lim Tae-hee and other two members to be appointed by Park will join the new nine-member leadership.

In his acceptance speech, the new GNP chairman said, “I believe the recent confusion and crisis stemmed from the lack of public trust in the ruling party. I will do my best to regain the confidence of the people.”

Many pay keen attention to whether the new chairman would be able to find a breakthrough in the recent political conundrum given that Park, as a senior of pro-Lee Myung-bak members, has often stressed cooperation and communication within the party as well as dialogue with the opposition parties.