People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok said Wednesday that "the public no longer trusts this administration's self-investigation," calling for the opposition to take full charge of recommending a special prosecutor and for the scope of the investigation to be unlimited.
Speaking at a press conference on current affairs at the National Assembly, Jang said President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party had "covered up, concealed and defended the National Election Commission's numerous crimes" and had "branded citizens worried about election fraud as conspiracy theorists."
He urged President Lee and the Democratic Party to "step away from the effort to uncover the truth behind the disenfranchisement crisis," adding that "many citizens already know that President Lee, the Democratic Party and the National Election Commission are one and the same."
Jang also said the ballot shortage was "not a simple mistake" and that "organized digital manipulation has now come to light." He criticized the NEC for trying to contain the fallout by attributing the irregularities to isolated incidents in certain regions involving individual staff members, saying the commission's stance amounted to asking whether results were all that mattered.
He went on to say that manipulating voter turnout figures would naturally lead to manipulating vote-share figures, and that any number could be altered at will. "If such signs have emerged in Gyeonggi Province and the Chungcheong provinces, I suspect the same could have happened anywhere in the country," he added.
Turning to the Democratic Party, which is in negotiations with the PPP over the scope of a special prosecutor act — including whether NEC servers fall within its remit — Jang said the ballot shortage was already an established fact and that a court had recognized probable cause for the digital manipulation charges. He asked what the party was trying to exclude from the scope of the probe, urged it to stop obstructing what he called a "people's special prosecutor," and called on it to cooperate so that a fair and proper investigation could be launched.
He added that passing the special prosecutor act must come before pushing through amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure to abolish supplementary investigative powers. "If supplementary investigative powers are abolished without passing the special prosecutor act, it will ultimately be the administration that is abolished," he said.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
