UN chief may be unwitting loser

Ban’s standing in polls declines

SEOUL, Dec 5, (RTRS): Besides South Korean President Park Geun-hye, the biggest casualty of the country’s mushrooming political corruption scandal may be the presidential aspirations of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Although he has not declared his candidacy, Ban was until a month ago the front-runner in opinion polls to win the election scheduled for Dec 20, 2017, a race he was widely expected to contest from Park’s conservative Saenuri Party.

But the scandal that has become known as “Park Geun-hye-Gate” and threatens Park’s presidency has sowed division in the party. An impeachment vote is set for later this week, and Ban’s standing in polls has declined, while the Saenuri has become a much less viable platform for a run.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all now for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to join the Saenuri Party. Unless he is stupid, he would never join Saenuri, would he?,” said Choung Byoung-gug, a Saenuri lawmaker who co-heads an anti-Park faction that favours formation of a new conservative party.

It is not unusual for a major South Korean political party to break into factions, with the mainstream forming a new party.

“If a new sound conservative party is set up, then it may be a different situation, but at this point it is too early to say,” said Choung.

Ban, 72, was South Korean foreign minister from 2004-2006 under the liberal President Roh Moo-hyun, but was a non-partisan career diplomat.

He now faces the prospect of having no party to join to make use of the political machinery crucial to running a campaign. That institutional support is especially important given that Ban has been based in New York for a decade and has never run for office in South Korea.

Time is also not on Ban’s side if Park is forced to exit sooner than later.

Last week, Park sought to head off calls for her immediate resignation or impeachment by asking parliament to come up with a plan and timetable for her to step down. The opposition dismissed the manoeuvre and has called for an impeachment vote for Dec 9.

If parliament votes for impeachment, which is not a certainty given the two-thirds majority needed would require the support of roughly 30 members of Park’s Saenuri party, the Constitutional Court would still need to uphold the motion, a process that could take months.

If Park leaves early, either by resigning or by being forced out by impeachment, a new election for a full five-year presidential term must be held in 60 days.

An early election would be disadvantageous for Ban, since he cannot begin a campaign before his UN term ends on Dec 31. If he had planned to run, his earlier political calculations would have been based on nearly a full year to campaign.

Ban has been evasive about his plans after his UN tenure ends, but he told Reuters in October that he was conscious of “expectations from many people in Korea that I should make myself available for a better future of Korea.”