SEOUL– A former interim leader of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) was named Sunday to lead the election campaign committee for the party’s presidential candidate Yoon Seok-youl.
Yoon said Kim Chong-in, a veteran politician who resigned in April after heading the PPP as a caretaker leader, will be in charge of his campaign committee for the 2022 presidential election.
Incumbent PPP Chairman Lee Jun-seok will serve as a co-standing chairman for the election campaign committee along with Kim Byong-joon, former interim head of the Liberty Korea Party, the shortlived predecessor of the PPP.
Yoon also named Kim Han-gil, a former head of the liberal Democratic Party (DP), to lead a separate committee on “preparations for a new era.”
“(Kim Han-gil) decided to join forces for a change of government by creating a platform in which hesitant moderate voters, as well as rational progressives, could join the PPP,” Yoon told reporters.
The ruling DP held a meeting of all lawmakers and unanimously agreed to give its presidential nominee Lee Jae-myung full authority to reform the party’s election campaign committee.
The move comes amid a growing sense of urgency within the party as Lee’s support ratings have lagged behind Yoon’s.
“We agreed on the need to structurally reform the committee for its renovation, swift and mobile decision-making and active communication, and decided to entrust the authority to reorganize and reform the committee to Lee,” DP Chairman Song Young-gil told reporters.
When asked if Lee would also be given authority to change the committee’s members, Song said he would.
The planned shakeup comes less than three weeks after the committee was launched.
Source: Yonhap News Agency