[Reporter’s Notebook] Satellite Parties No Longer Need to Be Democratic

"How can it be this blatant?"

In the political sphere, absurd incidents are occurring over the selection of proportional representation (PR) National Assembly candidates. Even though these are satellite parties, they are blatantly fighting over the nomination issues of other parties with different affiliations, going beyond mere interference. Although the Party Act and Public Official Election Act impose procedural legitimacy requiring the selection process of PR candidates to be 'democratic,' in reality, this is completely ignored.

Lee Cheol-gyu, the head of the People Power Party's talent recruitment committee, recently pointed out the nomination issue of the satellite party People’s Future, inadvertently 'exposing' that "initially, the People Power Party’s nomination management committee had agreed to carefully decide and then transfer the nominations to the satellite party People’s Future, but this promise was not kept." This means that the nominations were originally intended to be handled entirely by the People Power Party. The Democratic Party also openly intervened in the nomination process of its PR satellite party, the Democratic Union. From the agreement stage of forming the satellite party, the Democratic Party even insisted in the agreement that the Democratic Party would recommend the proportional candidates, despite it being a separate party.

Even if one tries to accept this by reasoning "because it’s a satellite party" or "because it’s effectively the major shareholder," the blatant disregard for even the minimum appearance by the two major parties is disconcerting. How was this possible? In January 2020, the National Assembly introduced a semi-proportional representation system and mandated a 'democratic selection process' for PR candidates, enacting Article 47-2 of the Public Official Election Act, which invalidates candidate lists if the process is not followed. The 'democratic procedure' requires PR National Assembly candidates to be selected through a democratic voting process by party members or an electorate, and this selection process must be conducted according to regulations previously submitted to the National Election Commission. In fact, four years ago, some parties were unable to field PR candidates because they did not meet these requirements. Moreover, this regulation prevented parties from conducting 'closed-door nominations' for strategic PR candidate placements.

However, less than a year later, in December 2020, this regulation disappeared through a behind-the-scenes deal between ruling and opposition parties during a plenary session. It is believed that the strict regulation was removed because it prevented free nomination of PR candidates. As a result, the current Public Official Election Act only contains textbook language stating that 'candidate nominations must follow democratic procedures,' but all specific criteria have been deleted. Because of this, the PR candidate nomination process no longer needs to follow democratic procedures.

The Central Election Commission is processing the registration of PR National Assembly candidates until 6 p.m. on the 22nd. However, the final tally is expected to be announced late at night, much later than this deadline, because it is uncertain how many parties will register. This is partly due to the introduction of the semi-proportional representation system, which led to the emergence of many PR parties, but largely because it has become possible to register PR National Assembly candidates without following democratic procedures.