Ahn calls off talks on single candidacy

Moon says misunderstanding can be resolved

The campaign team of independent presidential hopeful Ahn Cheol-soo called off negotiations over merging candidacies with Democratic United Party (DUP) contender Moon Jae-in Wednesday, accusing the opposition party of spreading false rumors to gain advantage in the competition.

Ahn Cheol-soo

The two candidates have been in talks to form a unified front against Park Geun-hye, candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, but have been struggling to agree on the ground rules for the union. Meeting reporters in Busan, Moon denied accusations of deliberately inventing gossip and said he was doing his best to put the talks back on track as soon as possible.

“The Moon side systematically spreads a rumor that Ahn would concede the candidacy,” Yoo Min-young, Ahn’s spokesman, said in a news conference, before confirming that all talks with the DUP were put on hold for the time being.

“Moon says the right things, but acts in a different way. He is determined to beat Ahn in the competition and calculating what will enhance his chances and what will not. However, you have to wonder whether he is seeing the bigger picture and focusing on the greater goal of changing the government. We have requested Moon to act swiftly on the rumors that have been spread by DUP members, but he failed to provide a sincere answer.”

However, Yoo said that the process of streamlining the policies between the two candidates will continue. He also expressed hopes that the talks will be put back on track soon. Time isn’t a luxury for Moon and Ahn with the Dec. 19 polls fast approaching.

“If we see visible efforts from Moon, we will be ready to reengage,” Yoo said.

Moon claimed he had never heard about the story of Ahn conceding.

“I have never heard about those kinds of conversations in my camp and that’s not our official line either. Apparently, some words were taken out of context. The talks about forming a single candidacy is in progress and this is not even the time to discuss whether Ahn will concede or not,” he said.

“We will do our best to quickly resolve any misunderstanding if there was one.”

Moon and Ahn plan to hold a televised presidential debate that is likely to air early next week. But that’s about the only meaningful thing they managed to agree on as their negotiations had been progressing as smoothly as sandpaper before Yoo’s announcement.

This allowed their opponent Park Geun-hye, daughter of late dictator Park Chung-hee and contender out of the ruling Saenuri Party, to intensify her verbal attack on the efforts to establish a single opposition candidacy, which she calls political collusion.

While recent opinion polls favor Park in a three-way race, the outcome is dramatically more unpredictable if Moon or Ahn withdraws. But that is certainly looking like a big “if.”

Ahn’s campaign managers seemed disturbed by the results of daily surveys by Realmeter, which shows Ahn’s edge in the popularity contest with Moon disappearing. They questioned the credibility of the surveys, done mechanically through automated answering systems, resulting in dramatically lower response rates than when done by pollsters. Of course, Moon’s camp didn’t mind about touting the Realmeter results.

“How can any survey have any credibility if the percentages between the two candidates change by double digits figures every day?” said an official from Ahn’s camp.

Ahn’s backers were also angered by a Tweet by Moon associate Baek Won-woo, which questioned why Lee Tae-gyu, a former presidential secretary for President Lee Myung-bak, has a role in Ahn’s camp.

Moon and Ahn have repeatedly insisted that they consider each other as ideal partners to lead the country into a new era of centrist politics that aim to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth. If the mutual affection is real, then they are really displaying an odd way of expressing it.

Earlier in the day, Park Sun-sook, a former lawmaker and Ahn’s chief campaign strategist, wasn’t shy about blasting the DUP to reporters, accusing the party’s lawmakers of spreading false rumors and accusations in attempting to gain an advantage in the single candidacy talks.

This was hours after Park Kwang-on, one of Moon’s spokesmen, pointed to an opinion poll of a vernacular newspaper to claim that Ahn would be the wrong choice to represent a united liberal front.

Moon and Ahn had been expected to address the public in a joint statement Wednesday about their efforts to merge their candidacies. They didn’t and now the representatives of both camps are struggling to agree to a timetable for just that.

“The DUP efforts to exploits its organizational powers to influence the results (of the single candidacy negotiations) is beginning to push against the limits of acceptability.” said Park an Ahn spokeswoman.

“Moon seems to be a good person, but I don’t know why people around him are behaving like this … We are hearing all sorts of abnormal activities (by DUP members) involving a bunch of lies. Some of them even toward journalists that our candidate (Ahn) met Moon and expressed his willingness to concede (which isn’t true). This is not how responsible people act and talk.”

The competition between Moon and Ahn will likely come down to a public opinion poll. But the camps have struggled to agree on who to quiz and what to ask them.

Moon says the survey should be more about finding the candidate who better represents liberal political values and priorities. He also calls for an open primary-like process to complement the survey to enable more voters to participate in the process. Ahn on the other hand simply insists whoever has the better shot at defeating Park should be given the chance to do so.

Moon claims that the methods for selecting the winning candidate should be finalized by no later than Friday, with just a little more than a month left until the Dec. 19 polls. However, Ahn’s representatives stress they won’t be rushed to a decision. <The Korea Times/Kim Tong-hyung>