A possible delay in the April general election is looming as the rivaling parties have yet to agree on a new electoral map and a set of key pending bills.
The leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea continue to engage in a dangerous game of brinkmanship, although the April 13 election is less than 50 days away.
If the two parties fail to pass the bill on redrawing the electoral map within this month, a delay will be inevitable for the upcoming general election.
National Assembly speaker Chung Ui-hwa has already warned that the election will have to be delayed if a new electoral map fails to pass the Assembly by Tuesday.
Chung mentioned Tuesday as the deadline because the National Election Commission should draw up the electoral registers for Korean nationals residing abroad from Wednesday.
If the new electoral map is not ready by Tuesday — as is highly likely — the NEC will have to draw up the registers based on the old map and adjust them after the new one has been hammered out.
If the two parties want to ensure that the coming election is held on schedule, they should resolve their differences on redistricting and key pending bills without further delay.
The parties’ plan to use secured phone numbers for their primaries has already been affected. The election law requires them to submit their telephone primary plans to the NEC, 23 days before telephone polls are conducted. This means that if a new electoral map is ready by today, the earliest that the two parties can hold primaries will be mid-March, which is too late.
Regarding the electoral map, the two parties appear to have nearly reached a consensus. They have agreed to divide the 300 seats of the National Assembly into 253 representative seats and 47 proportional ones, as opposed to the present 246 representative seats and 54 proportional ones.
The problem is that the passage of the electoral map bill is linked to that of other pending bills. The Minjoo Party wants to pass it together with the legislation on North Korean human rights, while the Saenuri Party insists that other key bills, including those on labor reform and antiterrorism, also be cleared.
The ruling party’s desire to get the pending bills enacted is understandable, but it should not push its linking strategy too far. Redrawing electoral boundaries has nothing to do with labor reform or fighting terrorism.
