The country’s election watchdog said Wednesday that it will temporarily allow candidates for next year’s general elections to electioneer even if constituencies are not redrawn.
Rival parties have failed to fully agree on redrawing the electoral constituency map for next April’s general elections. The current electoral map becomes invalid at the end of the year.
“There is no choice but to temporarily stop cracking down on election campaigning by candidates who will have finished registration by the end of this year,” the National Election Commission said in a press release.
The NEC also said that if the rival parties fail to make the final decision by Jan. 8, it has no choice but to hold a meeting in early January to come up with countermeasures.
The rival parties are required to redraw electoral districts as the Constitutional Court ruled last year that the current electoral map was unconstitutional, citing unequal representation.
The court said that the population differences between electoral districts should be reduced to two-to-one, noting the most populous electoral districts outweigh the least populous three seats to one.
On Thursday, rival parties held their seventh negotiation on the issue this month but once again failed to redraw the map.
The deal breaker was the parties’ differences on how to elect proportional representatives, with the ruling party pushing for a reduction in the number of proportional representation seats. (Yonhap)
