By Choe Seung-chul Staff reporter
(52)With three months to go before the presidential election, the ruling New Korea Party (NKP) is in an increasing state of alarm over the low popularity of its standard-bearer, Lee Hoi-chang. The situation is serious enough to spread worries far and wide in the ruling party that, for the first time in Korean election history, it might fail to retain power in December's poll.
(53)The party's presidential candidate Lee Hoi-chang is showing no signs of recovering his popularity. The latest opinion polls conducted by influential dailies after the Chusok holiday have shown Lee coming in a distant third with support from much less than 20 percent of voters, trailing far behind front-running Kim Dae-jung, who is supported by up to 30 percent.
(54)Lee's rating is the lowest since he won the ruling party's presidential ticket in July. Other than Kim and Lee, second opposition leader Kim Jong-pil, former Gov. Rhee In-je of Kyonggi Province, former Seoul Mayor Cho Soon and labor leader Kwon Young-kil have so far declared their candidacy for the presidency.
(55)All recent public polls have shown Kim Dae-jung leading, comfortably ahead of Lee Hoi-chang by a considerable margin of more than five percentage points. According to an established theory among election experts, once the contestants in a presidential race are settled, a front-runner who is more than five percentage points ahead of his or her rivals is very unlikely to be out-campaigned.
(56)The result of the presidential elections in 1992 and 1987 also back up the theory. President Kim Young-sam was eight to 14 percentage points ahead of his closest challenger, Kim Dae-jung, three months ahead of the 1992 poll, in which he, as the presidential candidate of the then ruling Democratic Liberal Party (DLP), beat Kim Dae-jung by a margin of 8.4 percentage points.
(57)Several months ahead of the 1987 election, Roh Tae-woo of the ruling Democratic Justice Party led his two chief rivals Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung by up to 15 percentage points before finally winning the presidency by defeating them by a margin of 8.6 percentage points. This is why many election experts predict that the ruling party may lose to the opposition unless Lee Hoi-chang pulls his campaign together and narrows the popularity gap between him and Kim Dae-jung to less than five percentage points by the end of this month.
(58)In what is seen as further impeding his troubled presidential bid, Lee's approval rating is even behind that of a new challenger, 49-year-old Rhee In-je. Rhee came in close behind Kim Dae-jung by winning support from about 20 percent of voters in the polls. The surveys by the major newspapers all showed that the entry by Rhee In-Je ate into Lee's share of the vote, which election experts say will help opposition leader Kim Dae-Jung's chances of winning in the coming vote.
(59)Rhee, who lost the ruling party's nomination to Lee in July, recently left the party to seek the presidency on his own. Lee had been under pressure from Rhee's followers to withdraw from the presidential race following his plunging popularity rating. It has yet to be seen how Rhee will further affect Lee's chances and the whole picture of the presidential contest ahead of the December vote, but Rhee's participation is expected to remain an obstacle to Lee's presidential bid.
(60)The NKP leadership is currently racking its brains to come up with emergency measures aimed at enhancing Lee's popularity and saving his troubled presidential bid. ``Something eye-catching for voters will be revealed at our party's national convention later this month,'' said top aides to Lee Hoi-chang Thursday.
(61)In a move to effectively promote Lee's presidential bid, President Kim, who concurrently leads the ruling party, is set to hand over the NKP leadership to Chairman Lee at the party's national convention scheduled for the end of this month. A week ago, in the hope of boosting his father's plummeting popularity, Lee's son, Jung-yon, volunteered for public service in a lepers' village on Sorok-do, an isolated island off southwest coast.
(62)Lee's approval rating, which topped most public polls until he was named the ruling party's standard-bearer in late July, has plunged since Jung-yon was the subject of opposition allegations last month that he dodged his military service by losing weight on purpose. Reports have it that Lee is also pushing for an alliance with opposition groups as well as influential conservative politicians to help his chances of winning in the Dec. 18 election.
With new variables like Rhee and Cho Soon having surfaced, however, the complexity of the presidential race makes it difficult to predict, political observers say.