Se-Hoon Oh and Chul-Soo Ahn unified once broke… Each candidate registration on the 19th

One of the biggest points of watching the 4·7 Seoul Mayor’s by-election, the’unification of opposition candidates’, once broke down. Candidate Se-hoon Oh and National Party Candidate Ahn Chul-soo initially set a goal of unifying the candidates until the 18th, when the registration of candidates begins, but they could not reach an agreement on the polling method, so they each registered as candidates for the mayor of Seoul. Both sides plan to negotiate again before the 29th, which is the deadline for printing the ballot, but if unification is not successful, it is predicted that a three-way confrontation with the Democratic Party candidate Park Young-sun could take place.

At 8 am on the 18th, Candidate Oh suggested a new plan to add up each of them by asking only the fitness question at one of the polls and the competitive question at the other. The leadership of the people’s strength insisted that in addition to this, a fixed-line telephone system must be introduced at the Emergency Response Committee meeting on the morning of that day. The reason was that the Central Election Commission came up with a voter interpretation that’in order to obtain an objective sample, both wired and wireless telephone systems must be used in parallel.’

Yang-seok Chung, Secretary General of the People’s Power and Lee Tae-gyu, Secretary General of the People’s Party, resumed working-level negotiations at 10:40 am on the same day. Secretary-General Lee said that the proposal of Candidate Oh is “not acceptable because it is the wrong way.” He added, “If we accept the virtual confrontation in the power of the people, we will also accept 10% of the landline phone rate,” he added. It meant that the landline phone system could never be accepted unless the poll questions were set in the virtual confrontation method of `Park Young-sun vs. Oh Se-hoon` and `Park Young-sun vs. In the end, the working-level negotiations between the two sides ended with only parallel lines. Secretary-General Chung and Secretary-General Lee announced that “it became difficult to keep the promise to register a single candidate by the 19th.”

Negotiations, which I thought would end like this, resumed with Ahn at 12:15 p.m., saying, “I will accept candidate Oh’s proposal for the poll questionnaire.” Candidate Ahn said in a statement, “The working-level negotiation group pointed out several problems, saying that the proposal was unreasonable, but I will accept it for the sake of the cause.” They agreed to ask and add up the suitability and competitiveness questions separately from each of the two polls. Candidate Ahn said, “I would be grateful if the power of the people respects the opinions of Candidate Oh and gives full power to Candidate Oh.” The intention was that the leadership of the people’s strength was eliminated and Candidate Oh made a personal decision.

Secretary-General Chung and Secretary-General Lee went on to negotiate again at 2 pm on the same day, but in the end, they were unable to resolve the disagreement over the introduction of the fixed-line telephone system. Secretary-General Chung met with reporters after negotiations and said, “The gap in issues has not been completely resolved. In particular, the wired and wireless issues have not been resolved.” There is really no one.

Secretary-General Chung said, “There seems to be a different opinion between Candidate Oh and the leadership of the people’s strength in the introduction of the fixed-line telephone system.” “There is also a function of the party. In the National Assembly, it is easy to make decisions because the party representative is a candidate, but we are a little different,” he replied. However, he said, “I will take the time to pursue it, since both of them have consensus,” he said about the response of Candidate Ahn to the proposal of Candidate Oh.

As the negotiations broke down, the two candidates were each registered as a candidate for the mayor of Seoul on the 19th. The conservative camp appeared to be divided. Immediately, criticism came out that Kim Jong-in, chairman of the People’s Strength Emergency Response Committee, was blocking Candidate Oh’s will. Former Saenuri Party CEO Kim Moo-sung held a press conference on this day and said, “Kim Jong-in, who has been an obstacle to unification, should immediately resign.” Independent Congressman Hong Joon-pyo actually aimed at Chairman Kim and expressed it as’grumpy chop-ji’. On the other hand, inside the power of the people, criticism came out, pointing out that former CEO Kim is a close relationship with Candidate Ahn and that “the middle leaders seem to fight according to their interests.”

People’s Strength The first elected lawmakers also gave strength to the party’s position, saying, “I believe in the working-level negotiation team” after the meeting. “It’s an act to crush the same party’s representatives like that,” said a member of the Choe-sun. “I don’t know whether the executives represent the people’s aspirations for unity or their own aspirations.” However, there was also a mention that Chairman Kim’s remarks were too strong at the meeting.

Candidate Oh and Ahn are in a position that they will continue to negotiate before the 29th, the deadline for printing the ballot. If unification is successful before that, the name is written on the ballot, but it is marked as’resigned’.

[박인혜 기자 / 이희수 기자]
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