On the 26th, the People Power Party began the process of creating a ‘satellite political party’ in earnest, including recruiting promoters. As the Democratic Party of Korea was unable to decide on a method of distributing proportional representation even 75 days before the April 10 general election, it began preparations for the election in accordance with the current semi-linked proportional representation system that enables satellite parties. The explanation is that the ruling party took action first to put pressure on the Democratic Party, which was torn over the abolition of satellite political parties.
A high-ranking People Power official told this newspaper on the 26th, “If the Democratic Party does not receive the parallel proportional representation system that we request and decides to maintain the current semi-interlocked proportional representation system, we have no choice but to come up with measures.” He said, “We can’t just sit back and create a satellite party in line with the same model.” The parallel type advocated by the People Power Party is the past method of voting for local districts and proportional representatives separately, so satellite parties cannot be created.
The People Power Party began recruiting promoters for satellite political parties from this day. It is reported that a preparatory committee for party creation has been formed with the consent of more than 200 party officials, and a promoters’ convention is planned to be held next week. Afterwards, the party will begin recruiting more than 1,000 party members from at least five metropolitan cities and provinces, which is a condition for founding the party. The satellite party’s name is being considered to include ‘people’ or ‘power’ so that it is reminiscent of ‘people power’. Previously, during the last general election, the name of the satellite party of the United Future Party (currently the People Power Party) was the ‘Future Korea Party’.
The Democratic Party has not been able to decide whether to maintain the current semi-linked system, in which the larger the number of constituency members, the fewer proportional representatives are assigned, or to return to the past parallel system in which district and proportional representatives are elected separately. The current system was pushed through by the Democratic Party just before the last general election under the pretext of giving preference to minority parties. However, in the actual general election process, the two major political parties, including the Democratic Party, used a trick of having proportional representation candidates run as affiliates of satellite parties that were separate on paper in order to produce more elected candidates.
2024-01-26 18:25:00
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