On March 30, at Gyeongnam Information University in Sasang-gu, Busan, students from the pastry and bakery club created the ‘4·7 Kook Voting Cookie’ to promote voting participation. The Gyeongnam Information University and the Busan City Election Commission plan to deliver 3,000 cookies made on this day through an in-house welfare facility, delivering side dishes to 1,300 households including the elderly and disabled in the area. Reporter Song Bong-geun
The Central Election Commission decided that expressions such as “hypocrisy,” “incompetence,” and “naeronambul (if I do romance, if others do affair)” cannot be used in voting encouraging phrases. The reason is that the phrase makes it easy to infer a specific political party.
The People’s Power Public Relations Bureau recently inquired about whether certain phrases could be used for voting-encouraging banners, and it said on the 3rd that it received such a response. The three phrases the People’s Power inquired about were “voting overcomes hypocrisy”, “voting overcomes incompetence” and “voting defeats the poor”.
According to the power of the people, the NEC decided that “the above text is an expression that an elector can easily infer a specific political party, or it appears to be against, so it cannot be used to encourage general voting.”
The Election Commission explained that “since last year’s general election, the same policy was applied to allow only the content of invitations to participate in voting for pure purposes, not content that affects the election.” For example, in last year’s 21st general election, the Democratic Party decided that a banner saying ‘100 years pro-Japanese liquidation, let’s judge by vote’ was also unacceptable.
An official from the power of the people pointed out that “the Election Commission is not an independent organization, but an affiliated organization to support the Democratic Party elections, which deserves criticism.” .
The opposition party’s distrust of the NEC continued during the by-election campaign. The power of the people pointed out that the voting promotional material with taxis produced by the NEC was similar to the blue color of the Democratic Party, and also opposed the NEC’s conclusion that the TBS’Let’s Do (1) Do’ campaign does not fall under the pre-election campaign. At the end of last month, the people’s power visited the NEC in protest, saying, “We are making a lot of decisions that are favorable to the ruling party and’rubber band decisions’ without principles.”
Reporters Ga-young Lee and Jin Heo [email protected]
