Survival Will Mean Eating Humble Pie, by Kang Chun-suk

Had the parliamentary election been held on Dec. Nineteen simultaneously with the presidential vote, what would our political landscape expression like? At the clip Thousand National Party campaigner Spike Lee Myung-bak won in 210 out of the sum 245 constituencies across the country. In 170 constituencies, he trounced United Democratic Party campaigner Chung Dong-young by a border of over 20 points. Autonomy Forward Party campaigner Spike Lee Hoi-chang barely managed to win four electoral territories in his place base, the Chungcheong region. Calculated that way, the gross national product would have got won nearly 250 parliamentary seats, far above the 200 two-thirds bulk needed to amend the Constitution. A gross national product absolutism could nearly have got emerged. That was public sentiment only 100 years ago.

Now, with the general election 12 years away, what is the situation? The subject of the conversation these years is if the gross national product will be able to procure even a simple bulk (150 seats). President Lee's blessing evaluations in the aftermath of the presidential ballot was 86 percent. His current blessing evaluations hover between 50 and 60 percent, falling nearly 30 points in 100 days. Respondents who believe electors should allow the Spike Lee disposal a bulk so that it may work normally business relationship for 42 percent, while 40 percentage phone call for restraining it so that it may not administrate the state on its own. Trends have got it that the former grouping is slipping and the latter rising. One in three electors who supported Spike Lee in the presidential election have got changed their commitment and mean to vote for non-GNP candidates, according to a poll. To be sure, the gross national product is not alone the receiver of grim news. Considerable prognoses state that the gross national product will win a bulk without trouble because the party's traditional support alkali and its commitment to the political political party stay unchanged, and that the UDP's parliamentary campaigners are mostly incumbent lawmakers with a weak competitory edge, having barely scraped a win on the dorsum of the harmful reverberations from the unsuccessful effort to impeach president Roh Moo-hyun.

Large snowflakes run easily, states the old adage, and public sentiment is indeed worrying. It looks only a few years ago that the public disquieted about a possible outgrowth of a gross national product dictatorship, but now the political party is having to fight to win a parliamentary majority.

What bloopers have got the Spike Lee disposal and the gross national product committed in the past few calendar months to see the tremendous border of 5.3 million ballots run like snow? Charges against the over-eager presidential Passage Committee are nil but an excuse. The passage squads under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun also blundered, but the blessing evaluations of the two presidents still hovered between 70 and 80 percentage around this time.

What then have turned the general election, so difficult on the heels of the presidential victory, into a judgement on the administration? The ternary whammy of the assignment of cardinal authorities officials, nomination of parliamentary campaigners and comments and actions on the portion of the disposal and political party leadership. Government force determinations and campaigner nominations should play the function of an adhesive material for national integrating and internal rapprochement of a political party by rallying Black Maria divided in the course of study of the presidential primary and election. However outstanding, a politician cannot inhabit the helm with his or her buddies alone. Those who played the major function in producing the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun disposals didn't resemble them in footing of societal class, region, religion, schooling or bloodlines. They were able to take powerfulness because electors who were very different from them in many respects rallied behind them for a while. The same is the lawsuit with the Spike Lee administration. If the leading accommodates only yes-men and disregards all others as antipathetic, soon only the buddies support the leadership. That was the lawsuit with the aweary and lonesome last old age of the Roh administration, when only his support grouping Nosamo remained behind him.

More serious is the fact that there is cipher in the Spike Lee administration, despite consistent populace complaints, who is eager to listen to them, who stand ups up and says, "I've done wrong. I'm responsible," and who gives himself to attempting to rectify these blunders. The political party and the administration, leading and rank-and-file alike, indicate 1 finger at their opponents, while the public clearly sees that with the remaining three fingers they point consecutive dorsum at themselves. They have got yet to larn to acknowledge licking by the people. Having establish so much fault with the Roh administration, which repeatedly ignored public sentiment, they now look ready to copy its bad habits.

It is not too late. But they will have got to larn to travel down on bended knee joint before the public and acknowledge they were wrong. Only then can they survive.