By Andy Jackson
Former Gyeonggi Province Governor Sohn Hak-kyu is laying the foundation for a run as a fiscal conservative and ``pro-unification’’ progressive. While taking the middle way, Sohn has criticized both the left and right, calling them ``regressive and ineffective.’’ He is seeking a centrist political alliance to propel him into Cheong Wa Dae.
We have seen this before. It was the same strategy tried by former Prime Minister Goh Kun. Alas, Goh floundered despite his initial popularity and he was forced to give up his ambition for the presidency in January.
Soon enough, Sohn will learn the same lesson that Goh learned: The center doesn’t win elections by itself. The center is what candidates fight over after they have secured their base on the left or right. That is why true centrist parties are so rare.
The right is going to back Lee Myung-bak or Park Geun-hye, both political heavyweights of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP). Whomever of those two emerges from the party primary race is going to get more or less the unified support of conservatives.
Sohn’s bolting from the GNP was an admission that he cannot get conservatives on board his campaign. He has publicly embraced former President Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy of engagement with North Korea. Sohn has recently visited the North, where he emphasized his plan to foster economic cooperation between Seoul and Pyongyang.
He followed that with a three-day stay-over in the southwestern city of Gwangju, the progressive holy land and center of a region which routinely gives overwhelming support to progressive candidates (having given over 90 percent of its vote to Kim in 1997 and Roh Moo-hyun in 2002).
That is a nice start, but the big question is whether he can gather a large enough group of progressive supporters to make a viable run for the top spot. The logical place to look for those supporters is the pro-government Uri party or one of its larger remnants. So far, his efforts have met with some success.
In a poll conducted last month by The Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, Sohn got the largest share of Uri Party supporters with 16.8 percent, compared with 13.9 percent for Chung Dong-young. The 35.4 percent of Uri party backers who expressed no preference indicates that he still has some room to grow. Furthermore, he won a plurality of support in a poll of Uri Party members in a more recent poll in the Naeil Shinmoon, beating Chung 21 percent to 18 percent.
Despite his efforts and the progress he has made over the last few months, Sohn still has a long way to go before he can get progressives on board his campaign.
Many progressives have and will refuse to back his campaign because of his support for the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States and his general ``neo-liberal’’ tendencies on economic issues. To make matters worse, the National Assembly is expected to vote on the FTA in September or October; just as whatever group emerges from the remnants of the Uri Party is expected to choose its nominee.
Even if he does get the backing of one of the new party alliances, whichever candidate from the Democratic Labor Party emerges from its September primary will certainly challenge him on labor and other economic issues. In what is expected to be a close election, even a slight movement from Sohn to the DLP candidate by labor union members and other progressives would be fatal.
Considering his position, what can Sohn do to improve his chances?
First, he should stop pretending that the center can hold. In a center-left campaign, it is the left that usually leads. He has to realize that he will need progressives of every stripe on board to have any chance of winning the presidency. He should not count on progressives voting for him just because he is better than the GNP candidate. A progressive challenger can and will emerge if he neglects the left.
Second and in a related point, he should stop unnecessarily provoking progressives like he did when he called President Roh Moo-hyun a ``typical incompetent progressive’’ last March. It costs him support with progressives without gaining him any support from conservatives. Just calling Roh incompetent would have gotten his point across without alienating potential supporters.
Third, unless he plans to change his views on the free trade agreement, he needs to seek another way to find common ground with labor groups. One possibility would be to pledge to work with labor and farming groups in drafting future trade agreements.
Whatever he plans to do to win over the labor vote, he needs to do it before the FTA vote comes up. It is easier to hold a coalition together through tough times than to build one during tough times.
If Sohn does not take action in the next few months to get progressive and labor voters to support him, his campaign would either fizzle out in September or hit a wall in December. The clock is ticking.
Andy Jackson teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College.