April 19, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Dozens of lawmakers defected from President Park Geun-hye’s governing Saenuri Party on Dec.27 over the corruption scandal involving Park and her aides, pledging to create a new conservative party in the run-up for the next year’s presidential election.

The departure of 29 anti-park lawmakers left Saenuri with 99 parliamentary seats, making it the second largest in the National Assembly. The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea emerged as the biggest political party with 121. The People‘s Party stands in third with 38 seats. 

The conservative party’s split marks a turning point for South Korea’s politics as it witnesses four major parties competing for power for the first time since 1990. At that time, there were two conservative and two liberal parties until they realigned into one big conservative and one minor liberal party.

“We will begin our journey to play a pivotal role for the conservatives and provide them with orderly and stable reform. We will preserve liberal democracy, achieve social unification and create a warm community,” said the defectors in a statement.

The lawmakers said that they will launch a new party named “New Conservative Party for Reform” on Jan. 24. They also planned to register themselves as a parliamentary negotiating group, who can receive a government subsidy and exercise tie-breaking votes between the major parties.

Their rebellion against Saenuri came after most anti-Park lawmakers joined opposition parties in passing the impeachment motion against the president earlier this month. Up to 62 Saenuri lawmakers were considered to approve the motion in a secret ballot.

Since then, they have clashed over the control of the party with the pro-Park faction who dominated leadership positions and embraced most rank-and-filers. The factional feud ended in favor of the pro-Park faction when one of Park’s loyalists was elected as the new floor leader on Dec. 16.

“Though they are trying to cast their defection as a reformative move, I’m afraid it is another attempt to pursue political ambition and salvage their faction,” said Saenuri‘s newly-elected Floor Leader Chung Woo-taik.

Chung also dismissed their defection as a “failure” because they failed to attract all the Saenuri lawmakers that they had been confidant in winning over. Initially, the Saenuri dissenter group expected at least 35 lawmakers to join them.

The defection group includes a number of former Saenuri heavyweights, such as former Saenuri leader lawmakers Rep. Kim Moo-sung and former Saenuri Floor Leader Rep. Yoo Seong-min. Both had clashed with Park over her welfare policies and nomination rule for the 2016 general elections.

There are other high-profile legislators working at parliamentary committees. Among them are third-term lawmaker Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, chairman of Legislation and Judiciary Committee who would represent the legislative body during the impeachment trial against Park at the Constitutional Court.

The defectors said that more Saenuri lawmakers would quit the party as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would join the new party to run for the 2017 presidential race. The world’s top diplomat has distanced himself from the president and her loyalists since the corruption scandal.

“I would make a decision on my political move when Ban returns to Korea. I think Ban is our only alternative,” said former Saenuri Floor Leader Rep. Chung Jin-suk, who has been considered to be close with Ban. Chung succeeded Yoo for the post in 2016.

By Yeo Jun-suk/The Korea Herald (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)