[Editorial] GNP Must Use Internal Conflict to Improve Itself

The Grand National Party (GNP) is experiencing serious internal conflict in the wake of the passage of the "administrative city law" in the National Assembly. The GNP Assembly members who opposed it are calling for the party's leadership to resign and say they are going to file a petition with the Constitutional Court. Chairwoman Park Geun Hye has made it clear she is going to stand up to them, so the situation could possibly lead to a fragmentation of the party. Serious internal strife at the main opposition party makes the whole political landscape uneasy. Even if only for the sake of the economy at a time when it is showing rare signs of recovery, the GNP needs to work out its problems thorough democratic and rational debate and persuasion.

The party members who opposed the legislation have created something called the "Defend the Capital Struggle Committee." They are engaged in protest that includes resigning from party posts and hunger strikes. They are out of step with the people in doing so. The "administrative city" is being pursued because there has not been balance in national development, since the population is overly concentrated in the greater Seoul region. The GNP voted in a party caucus to make passing the legislation party policy and then it voted to pass it when it made the main floor of the Assembly. It was behavior disregardful of the democratic process to block the passage of a bill the ruling and opposition camps had both agreed on as they disobeyed something the party chose to make official policy. It is also inappropriate to go to the Constitutional Court so often for things that should be debated and decided at the Assembly.

They argue that the "administrative city law" is an "inefficient partition of the capital" and a "big deal done in exchange for the historical inquiry law," but they lack any clear basis for those assertions. Their questions about legitimacy make you think their opposition is more about region and faction than concerns for the nation, because GNP Assembly members from Seoul and the greater Seoul region led the way in opposing the bill while the elements for and against it have their own potential presidential candidates. It is almost a political offensive to say GNP members who voted in favor of the bill "sold the capital to cover up history," because the ruling and opposition parties had already agreed on the historical inquiry law.

The internal strife is a crisis and an opportunity. The weak leadership and identity of a party that has indiscriminately opposed the government have become apparent with this. The GNP should quit the futile infighting and improve on its party structure through frank discussion, in order to be reborn as a responsible alternative party.

The Hankyoreh, 5 March 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]