I wrote this for a Korean Magazine last week and when it will be published I will leave a URL.
With less than a week left in South Korea’s sixth Presidential election scheduled to be held on December 19, what does this election hold for Korean voters?
South
Korea’s transition from being a dictatorship to a democracy has a
fairly short history. It was not until 1987 that Korea held its first
general elections in a free and fair manner. No wonder that its
march to democracy can be benchmarked for other countries in Asia, a
continent where dynastic politics, personalities and certain families
dominate the electoral scene for reasons which include deep roots in
dictatorships, feudalism, lack of democracy at grassroots level and
the involvement of large amounts of money. South Korea has been an
exception thus far but it seems to be fading away gradually. These
upcoming elections are going to be a watershed in the development and
evolution of political and ideological preferences of the South
Koreans as well as the democratic process, per se.
From
the perspective of someone who has grown up in and now living in
Seoul for the past decade or so, dictatorships are what we Pakistanis
grew up with and are most familiar with. More than half of the
country’s history is overshadowed by dictatorships. Even when
democratic governments took reigns of power, family members of these
dictators joined mainstream politics and clung to power from the
platform of one or the other political party. South Asia in
particular and Asia in general is the most favored breeding ground
for dynastic politics and the chosen ones.
Zooming
in on South Korea, the two major candidates for these upcoming
elections – Park Geun-hye and Moon Jae-in are considered the
political legacies of the past. One is the daughter of an army
general and the other – a close friend/aid of a former president.
All the surveys thus far have shown a very narrow gap in terms of
their lead on each other but mostly in media, Park Geun-hye seems to
be the favorite to win. Almost all polls showed that she is leading
the race even if it is with a slight margin. Already major
international newspapers are predicting that she is very close to
becoming the first female president of South Korea.
Many
voters within the age group of 50 and above want to vote for Ms. Park
and there are several reasons to it which include their sympathy for
the woman whose parents were assassinated. Moreover, she is the
daughter of a general who laid the foundation for one of Asia’s
great economic success stories. It was General Park Chung-hee’s
rule of 18 years that Korea broke its shackles of poverty; saw the
miraculous economic growth and development. Last but not the least,
she is also seen as the first woman who may lead South Korea, a
country that is his highly patriarchal and Confucian in nature and
none of the neighboring countries in the region ever saw a woman
heading a government yet in Northeast Asia.
With
this heavy baggage if she is elected for the top office then Korea
will enter this long list of Asian countries where we see dynastic
politics. But what is wrong with dynastic politics? Actually, in
principle, there is nothing wrong with political dynasties. In
practice, however, it reinforces the exclusionary power structure.
Fatima Bhutto, niece of Pakistan’s former prime minter Benazir
Bhutto, when asked why she doesn’t enter politics since her
grandfather and her aunt both served several terms as presidents and
prime ministers of Pakistan replied:
"Dynasty is fundamentally incomparable with the democracy and they are opposites. While dynasty is exclusive, democracy is inclusive. Democracy inspires participation. Dynasty enforces closed policy. Democracy is all about creative differences, tolerance for the unknown and dynasty is all about self."
In
my country Pakistan, we have seen the stranglehold of dynastic
families on politics and how it has deterred capable people from
entering politics, since they don’t stand much chance of winning.
For those who do enter politics their chances of reaching the top are
very few. On the other hand, for the family of the political/military
elites, they do not have to struggle too much to reach the top
echelons of power since they are always in the public eye and for
them to reach prominent positions is relatively easy. This holds true
for Ms. Park also who was the de-facto First Lady of Korea, at a
young age of 22 years only, after her mother’s assassination. So if
we have to compare her, the Gandhi’s in India and the Bhuttos in
Pakistan is what Park Geun-hye will be to Korea – which surely is
not an ideal situation because once this starts it is really
difficult to stop.
One
of the experts on the subject is Professor
Ronald U. Mendoza who notes that dynastic politics in
particular, is “pernicious” in so far as it retards a democracy’s
ability to respond to its citizens’ needs and people’s
empowerment in general. It is to be seen what these elections hold
for the people of Korea – will they vote for the dynastic politics
or not!
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