PPP: 'All ballots should have been fully preserved'

Democratic Party: 'Stop using citizens' voting rights for political survival'

Some protesters gather outside the police cordon in front of the handball arena at Olympic Park in Songpa-gu, Seoul, after the National Election Commission special prosecutor team completed its public ballot verification and removed ballot boxes from the venue on Friday. The verification was related to a ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]
Some protesters gather outside the police cordon in front of the handball arena at Olympic Park in Songpa-gu, Seoul, after the National Election Commission special prosecutor team completed its public ballot verification and removed ballot boxes from the venue on Friday. The verification was related to a ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]

The ruling and opposition parties traded barbs over evidence preservation measures following the National Election Commission special prosecutor team's public ballot verification. The People Power Party questioned the procedural legitimacy of the process, saying not all ballots were immediately preserved, while the Democratic Party of Korea accused the PPP of exploiting election fraud claims for political ends.

PPP spokesperson Ham In-gyeong said in a statement Saturday that "the PPP demanded from the outset of the public verification that even ballots that drew no objections be thoroughly preserved," adding that evidence preservation "is not something the PPP should have had to repeatedly demand — it is a basic procedure that should have been a given before the public verification even began."

Ham also questioned whether the preservation measures announced at a press briefing on the afternoon of Friday — the day after ballots were removed — were adequate. "How much better would it have been had transparency and procedural legitimacy been secured from the very beginning, across the entire process of sorting, transporting and storing the evidence," Ham said.

The NEC special prosecutor team said that during Friday's verification, it asked the NEC to preserve the current condition of ballots that drew no objections, in preparation for the possibility of additional verification at a later date.

The PPP also took issue with delays in granting broadcast crews permission to film during the public verification. Ham said it "should not have taken roughly three hours of demands on-site to secure filming access — that should have been guaranteed as a matter of course." Ham added: "If the process itself is not sufficiently disclosed to the public during a so-called public verification, one cannot help but ask what the point of calling it public is."

The Democratic Party framed the PPP's objections as a continuation of its election fraud narrative.

Democratic Party floor spokesperson Lee Ju-hee, in a written briefing Saturday, directed remarks at PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok, urging Jang to "immediately stop the politics of using citizens' voting rights as fuel for extending your own political life" and to "abandon the absurd insistence that only your claims are true and everything else is a conspiracy."

Lee also called on Jang to retract remarks describing the special prosecutor's work as "theft" and to clearly state whether Jang would accept results that differ from what Jang has claimed. "If you cannot even trust the special prosecutor that the PPP itself helped recommend, then what exactly are you proposing?" Lee said.

The Democratic Party also raised the special prosecutor's appointment process. Lee said the NEC special prosecutor "was appointed through candidate recommendations by the Korean Bar Association and the Law School Association, and by a unanimous vote of a public recommendation committee with equal representation from the ruling and opposition parties." Lee added that "rejecting even the verification process that the PPP helped create amounts to throwing away the qualifications of a leader of a legitimate political party."

Meanwhile, the special prosecutor team said it had asked the NEC to preserve the current condition of ballots that drew no objections during the Wednesday verification, in preparation for possible additional review. Thirteen boxes containing disputed ballots were removed by the special prosecutor team, and some are set to be sent to the National Forensic Service for detailed analysis.


rim@heraldcorp.com