Democratic Party Strengthens Reduction Rate to 30% for Incumbent Lawmakers Rated as 'Low Performers'

The Democratic Party of Korea has decided to strengthen the evaluation ‘penalties’ for incumbent lawmakers during next year’s general election nomination process. Regarding the listing of prospective candidates’ careers, the use of politicians’ names together is prohibited, making it impossible to use careers such as ‘Lee Jae-myung Democratic Party Special Advisor.’

Han Byung-do, the secretary of the Democratic Party’s General Election Planning Team and chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee, along with Jang Yoon-mi, spokesperson for the General Election Planning Team, briefed the results of the planning team meeting at the National Assembly on the 21st. Spokesperson Jang explained, “The General Election Planning Team agreed that the deduction for lower-ranked candidates in the primary should be strengthened based on the evaluation of elected public officials,” adding, “This is to encourage incumbent lawmakers to relinquish their vested interests.” Specifically, while maintaining the framework of imposing ‘penalties’ such as deductions for the bottom 20% of evaluated incumbents, a more stringent deduction rate of 30% will be applied to the bottom 10%, and those ranked between the 10% and 20% lower evaluation will receive the existing 20% deduction.

For the bottom 20% of incumbent lawmakers who receive low evaluation scores, 20-30% of their primary election votes will be deducted. Previously, in August of this year, the Innovation Committee led by Kim Eun-kyung proposed an innovation plan to increase the current party constitution and regulations, which deduct 20% of primary votes for the bottom 20% of incumbent lawmakers, to cover 30% of incumbents and strengthen the deduction rate to 40%.

Regarding this, Spokesperson Jang said, “This plan was discussed in Kim Eun-kyung’s innovation proposal, but specific rates were not reviewed,” and added, “This result came out as a new discussion was proposed.” She clarified that it does not strictly follow Kim Eun-kyung’s innovation plan.

Chairman Han introduced, “We have decided to operate a promotional platform for prospective candidates to disclose information and expand promotional opportunities for those who have passed candidate verification and received eligibility certification,” and explained, “The representative careers listed on the promotional platform will follow the standards of the 21st general election and the 8th local elections, but the criteria specify that the names of specific politicians cannot be displayed.” This means that only careers excluding names such as former Presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in or Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung will be listed. He added, “In the case of party leader special advisors, it should be listed only as Democratic Party leader special advisor,” and explained, “The representative careers used in the nomination review or primary election to be finalized later will also be based on the prospective candidates’ careers.”

The General Election Planning Team plans to submit these opinions to the party’s Supreme Council in the form of a recommendation.

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