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DPK, UFP should wake up and smell coffee
It had seemed unlikely that the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) would ever get close to the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) in terms of approval ratings but this is what is happening. Pollster Realmeter announced last Thursday that the DPK's weekly approval rating stood at 35.1 percent, just a little higher than the 34. 6 percent earned by the UFP.
After few years of trailing, the UFP has closed the gap to 0.5 percentage points. The news gets worse for the ruling party when factoring in the falling approval rating for President Moon Jae-in. In the same Realmeter poll, 43.9 percent of respondents said they viewed the President's performance positively, down 2.5 percentage points from the previous week.
Political winds blow and sway for sure, but few would deny that the figure shows a disappointment over the DPK's real estate policies, the expedient railroading of bills in the National Assembly and the chaos emanating from several reforms including that of the prosecution. If the DPK as well as the UFP were savvy enough, they could well read from this the certain fear that Moon Jae-in's lofty policy goals will leave every man and woman, for the worse, by the administration's end.
Those dropping their support for the DPK and the President are 30-and 40-something and women voters. The scandal of the former Seoul mayor's suicide amid sexual harassment allegations may have prompted the women voters to change their allegiance.
The fast pace of change should serve as an alarm for the DPK, which won a super majority of 176 seats in the 300-seat Assembly barely four months ago. For the UFP, it could be a tenuous source of delight, because it owes its rebound to the DPK's overly hurried political moves.
However, neither parties' performance in the nascent Assembly is anything to root for. The March 2022 presidential election is not far off, and before that a by-election is scheduled for April 2021. No party will win should it choose to rest on its high-handedness or reap gains from the other's missteps.
