The ruling Saenuri Party’s drive toward economic democratization is getting bumpier with the party’s floor leader and top planner of presidential pledges butting heads over the theory intensifying an internal power struggle.
The two have previously lashed out at each other over their interpretation of economic democratization, which has become the key policy platform of the Saenuri’s presidential candidate Park Geun-hye.
On Wednesday at a budget meeting at the National Assembly, floor leader Rep. Lee Hahn-koo reproached the democratization drive by saying, “The political circles are way over their heads over the obscure notion of economic democratization, competing for populism. And this is leading to businesses becoming discouraged and the public getting anxious.”
Lee, a former finance expert with a pro-business stance, has been contending that the concept and contents of economic democratization are ambiguous.
In response, Kim Chong-in, a former economist and head of Park’s brainstorming committee, said to Yonhap News, “It goes against common sense for the floor leader of the same party to even use the word ‘obscure’ to describe what the presidential candidate pledged in the candidacy and acceptance speeches.”
Kim has become Park’s entrusted economic brain by heading the Special Committee to Pursue People’s Happiness. He is renowned for having coined the phrase economic democratization during the constitutional revision in 1987.
Kim inveighed further by saying, “Lee seems to have some sort of emotional problem. I have never seen that kind of a politician in my life.”
Earlier in July, the two fired salvos at each other when Kim criticized Lee by saying, “Because Lee has been devoted to chaebol companies for a long time, he speaks for (chaebol’s) interests.” Lee countered that by saying, “I am clueless to what Kim means by economic democratization, what the contents are and what he is thinking.”
The fissure in the traditionally right-wing party is likely to continue as it attempts to move towards the center in hopes of winning the votes of the younger and moderate electorate.
Kim had also reportedly expressed discomfort upon reports of a move by the co-head of Park’s primary campaign committee Hong Sa-duck to bring in professor Chang Ha-joon, a world-renowned economist who promotes a different direction of economic democratization compared to Kim’s, which is focused on reforming chaebol.
Park Geun-hye, meanwhile, indirectly warned against the growing discord.
“Regardless of how (it is out of) passion, we should not be viewed as being in confusion. There is a need to set things straight ahead of the presidential race,” Park said during a luncheon with regional media.
She claimed there was no difference between Kim and Lee and that Kim was not necessarily for dissolving chaebol, and that Lee was not protecting the conglomerates either.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
