|
|
Victory by current front-runner Park Geun Hye in presidential elections tomorrow would simultaneously mean a departure and continuity for South Korea.
Park, 60, would be the first woman in the post, but she is also the eldest daughter of Park Chung Hee, the military dictator who ruled the country for 18 years until his assassination in 1979.
Polls put Park, the former head of the ruling conservative Saenuri Party, just ahead of Moon Jae In, the candidate for the opposition Democratic United Party, although the 59-year-old centre-left politician and former human rights lawyer appeared to be catching up.
“It’s difficult to predict the outcome,” pollster Kim Jiyoon of the Asan Institute, a Seoul think tank, said after the most recent polls came in. “It lies within the margin of error.”
Park led by an average of 2.7% in the 16 national polls taken on December 9-12, within the margin of error, the Yonhap News Agency reported. Polls showed both Park and Moon would get 40 to 50% of the vote in the single round of voting, giving no other candidate a realistic chance of winning.
The campaign has been hard-fought with the candidates trading allegations and participating in lively televised debates as well as mass rallies. The main issues have been the economy and enhancing general welfare in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Moon is aiming to turn the election into a shift towards a new kind of social and economic policy, calling on the electorate to reject the legacy left by President Lee Myung Bak of the Saenuri Party.
Lee’s popularity has declined sharply on the back of a series of scandals and the perceived failure to make good on his pledge of continued strong economic growth.
Under the constitution, the president may serve only one term, and Lee will have to vacate the “Blue House” in Seoul in February when his five years as president are up.
Park, who has attempted to distance herself from Lee, is linking Moon to the former liberal government of Roh Moo Hyun, who survived a tumultuous impeachment process during his 2003-08 presidency.
Moon served as Roh’s chief of staff among other appointments.
“Both candidates have clear ties to past conservative and progressive regimes,” Asan Institute chairman Hahm Chai Bong said. “They have thus been forced to come clean on what they think was bad.”
He said he perceives a clear shift to the political centre in both candidates.
Although the issue of North Korea has played a limited role in the campaign to date, national security could become more prominent in the final phase after Pyongyang launched a rocket in defiance of a UN ban.
While the communist regime claimed the launch was aimed at putting a satellite into space, South Korea and its ally the US saw the launch as a test of ballistic missile technology.
Both Moon and Park immediately condemned the launch, but political analysts differ sharply on what the effect of the launch would be on voting tomorrow.
Hahm sees a clear difference in their approaches on security and foreign policy although both aim for a more reconciliatory policy towards the North, backing away from Lee’s tough line, which was itself a rejection of Roh’s attempts at rapprochement.
Park is nevertheless seen as closer to the line taken by Lee while Moon was expected to be more open to political engagement with Pyongyang.
Some South Korean women are hoping that a victory for Park would result in greater rights for women in a country still dominated by its Confucian and patriarchal heritage.
But the issue of broader human rights proved a difficult one for Park during the campaign when she saw herself compelled to apologise for the actions of her father’s autocratic rule. - DPA