With "Suspicious Document Prosecution Report"... 'General Election Purge' Signal Shot, Attention on Party Audit Results

Innovation Committee and General Election Planning Team Agree on 'Excluding Low-Rated Lawmakers'
Regarding 'Named Rumors', Ruling Party Says "Nonsense... Legal Action"

The People Power Party announced on the afternoon of the 27th that it will file a complaint with the prosecution regarding the forged documents that have been circulating in the political sphere in relation to the party audit results of incumbent lawmakers and party district committee chairpersons.

Park Jeong-ha, the chief spokesperson of the People Power Party, stated in a briefing after the Supreme Council meeting that morning, "Recently, forged lists related to the party audit have been circulating, and we have decided to take legal action and proceed with filing a complaint with the prosecution."

The party audit is being conducted on 204 party district committees nationwide, and the results will be delivered to the soon-to-be-established Nomination Management Committee to be used as a key indicator for next year's general election nominations. Previously, the audit results containing the names of 22 incumbent lawmakers spread in the form of a leaked document, causing internal backlash within the party.

Within the party, some expect that since the Innovation Committee and the General Election Planning Team, formed last month, have reached a consensus on excluding lawmakers with low evaluations from nominations, the party audit results announced today will serve as a signal for a "purge of incumbents" ahead of next year's general election.

Meanwhile, the Party Audit Committee plans to hold its final meeting at the People Power Party central office this afternoon and then announce the audit results. There is also a possibility of publicly revealing some individuals' names. Previously, Shin Ui-jin, the head of the Party Audit Committee, visited Representative Kim Ki-hyun on the 21st to discuss the announcement of the audit results and told reporters, "For those who performed very well, we are willing to disclose their names as a form of encouragement," adding, "We will announce the top incumbent and the top non-incumbent."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

This party audit is also referred to as the "nomination hit list" because it could serve as a stepping stone for the "purge" of incumbent lawmakers ahead of next year's general election nominations. If a lawmaker receives a low evaluation in the audit results, they may be completely excluded from participating in the nomination primaries.

Earlier, the Innovation Committee announced its second innovation plan on the 3rd, which included excluding the bottom 20% of incumbent lawmakers from nominations, and the General Election Planning Team announced on the 22nd that it had approved an incumbent lawmaker evaluation plan that goes beyond the Innovation Committee's proposal. The General Election Planning Team stated, "We have established a system for nomination screening that makes parachute nominations fundamentally impossible through evaluation criteria," and added, "We will forward this to the Nomination Management Committee to ensure it is reflected in the nomination screening process through follow-up measures."

Bae Jun-young, the deputy head of strategic planning and a member of the General Election Planning Team, emphasized that the more incumbent lawmakers are replaced, the higher the chances of winning the general election. On SBS Radio that day, Deputy Head Bae said, "In 2008, our party's incumbent replacement rate was twice as high as that of the Democratic Party, and we won by a large margin," adding, "At the end of the Lee Myung-bak administration, there was a government judgment theory, but our replacement rate was 10% higher, which helped us overcome the Democratic Party."

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