Ahn Cheol-soo: "Return All Political Party Election Subsidies of 44 Billion Won... Let's Distribute Masks"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] Ahn Cheol-soo, leader of the People’s Party, announced on the 3rd, “I propose returning the election support fund of 44 billion won and using the returned funds to provide masks to voters.”

On the same day, Ahn stated on Facebook, “The election subsidies provided to political parties for the April 15 general election amount to a total of 44 billion won, including 12 billion won to the Democratic Party of Korea and 11.5 billion won to the United Future Party. The ‘fake’ satellite proportional representation parties of the two entrenched major parties took as much as 8.6 billion won,” adding, “That’s not all. If these fake parties exceed 3% of the party vote share, they will receive an additional 14.7 billion won in public funds on top of the 8.6 billion won already received.”

He pointed out, “Political parties have already received 43.2 billion won last year and 11 billion won this year as regular subsidies, separate from the election subsidies,” and added, “The economy is in a total crisis right now, and ordinary people are on the brink of homelessness. Isn’t it inappropriate to hold extravagant elections funded by taxpayers’ money when people can barely afford their meals?”

He continued, “All citizens are suffering due to COVID-19, and political parties should also participate in sharing the pain,” adding, “Since it is impossible to hold noisy elections like in the past, the costs cannot be very high either.”

Ahn proposed, “All political parties should return the entire 44 billion won in election support funds to the Central Election Commission, which should then allocate the returned funds to the national treasury for supporting low-income livelihoods or purchase masks publicly and distribute them to voters.”

He explained, “If the public mask purchase price is calculated at about 1,000 won per mask, 44 million masks can be purchased. Since there are 44 million voters in this general election and considering the average voter turnout of 52.7% in the last three general elections, approximately two masks per voter can be distributed to all voters,” and added, “I also think it is very meaningful to support low-income students with tablet PCs for online classes.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.