[Editorial] Major Parties Feasting on Local Legislature Seats

The work of increasing local legislature election districts for next year is showing signs of turning into an attempt by the major political parties to divide up the spoils from what is available. In the Seoul city government's tentative proposal, 120 of 162 election districts will have two city council representatives per district in something called a "two-person election district." The other 42 would have three council members, and not one would have four. The city of Busan is working on a similar proposal.

If that is what ends up happening, the two major parties, the ruling Uri Party and the opposition Grand National Party (GNP), will eat up all the votes and seats as this is a country where voters tend to choose candidates by their parties. The Democratic Party (DP) and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) are not being unreasonable to charge that it is just a "distortion of the 'small electoral district' system."

From early on the Political Reform Commission recommended partitioning districts with more than four persons when necessary, but during the June session of the National Assembly it quietly changed the rules to make it possible to partition districts of between 2 to 4. It will be hard for the commission to evade criticism that opened the door for the big ruling and opposition parties to politicize the process of determining districts.

The argument for partition is based in the fact there is overlap and repetition in local legislative bodies and the ability of elected officials to be representative of the areas they come from. That is not very convincing, since in North Chungcheong, North Jeolla, and four other non-national governments they have already decided to partition districts when there are five or more elected officials, something that is consistent with the law's intent. The basic intention of the revised election law was to increase the possibility that minor parties and diverse political factions could make advances too, so it is even more inappropriate to work against the intentions of the legislation.

They say that people who have roots and are active in the provinces are already giving up and not registering as candidates or are agonizing over whether to join one of the major parties. If that is how things go, the "party recommendation program" and "medium electoral districts" could end up helping specific parties sweep all the legislative positions in specific regions. The new election law was supposed to help the growth of "grassroots democracy" and it should not instead become an obstacle.

The Hankyoreh, 25 October 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]