The new 20th National Assembly is just gearing up for a fresh start, but Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party already finds himself trapped between a nose-diving party approval rating and an illicit fund probe concerning some of his closest aides.
Whether or not he succeeds in pulling the fledgling centrist opposition party out of the current trials will also act as a leadership barometer, judging his qualifications for the 2017 presidential election, in which he is expected to make a bid.
(Yonhap)
“Regardless of what happened, I am sorry to cause anxiety to the people,” Ahn said Friday over the ongoing allegations that one of the party’s proportional representatives took illicit funds during the April 13 general election campaigns.
This was a compromising turn from his stout response the previous day, in which he said that “the given allegations are not true.”
The National Election Commission on Thursday had reported Rep. Kim Su-min to the prosecution, charging her with taking up to hundreds of millions of won in political funds earlier this year.
According to the election watchdog, two local advertisement companies in charge of the party‘s campaign promotion transferred 238.2 million won ($203,000) to an account owned by a hotel that Kim used to run, but the detailed use of the money remained unclear.
The lawmaker denied the given charges, but has so far refrained from explaining any further.
Amid growing public reproach, Ahn quickly promised to establish an internal investigation team to look into the claims, in a preemptive attempt to eradicate the controversy once and for all.
“We will look into every detail, including on Kim’s proportional representative nomination, and disclose everything to the people,” he told reporters Saturday.
The greatest dilemma for the runner-up opposition party, which has been built on the promise of “new politics,” is that one of its core founding members is involved in the dishonorable charge.
One of the allegations is that the political novice Kim, who also happens to be the youngest member of the new legislature, had acted under the direction of party leadership, especially then-secretary general Rep. Park Sun-sook, and thus won herself the nomination for the proportional representation.
The fact that Kim had not even asked for the position further boosted suspicion that party leadership -- possibly Rep. Ahn himself -- may have been involved. The beleaguered party chief turned out to have interviewed Kim in a closed-door session, shortly before the party kicked off its proportional representative nomination committee.
The illicit fund probe came at a time when the No. 3 party‘s approval rating was faltering upon the swift rise of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a potential presidential candidate speaking for the ruling conservative Saenuri Party.
According to a survey conducted by local pollster Gallup Korea on June 7-9 of 1,002 voters here, the support rate for Ahn stood at 10 percent. He thus fell to No. 3 behind Ban, who accounted for 26 percent, and The Minjoo Party of Korea’s former chief Moon Jae-in, who won 16 percent.
Observers noted that a large number of reformist swing votes flocked from Ahn to Ban, preferring his reputed career as reelected chief of the international organization.
By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)
