A key senior member of the main opposition party announced Sunday his defection from the center-left party in a bid to create a left-leaning party ahead of a by-election scheduled for April.
“After agonizing for a long time, I decided to leave the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) today in order to join preparations for a new party,” Chung Dong-young, the party’s chief adviser, said in a news conference.
“I sympathize with the causes of reasonable progressive politics and peaceful, ecological welfare state building, pushed by (what is tentatively named) ‘the union of people,’ which is led by democratic and progressive blocs,” he noted.
The former three-term lawmaker criticized that NPAD failed to represent low and middle-class citizens, saying that “Only through the path (of the new party) can a government change be surely achieved.”
About 100 civil-society, religious and labor-sector figures have been pushing for the new progressive political party ahead of the April election to fill vacant parliamentary seats.
A number of former center-left and progressive party lawmakers have vowed to join the new party, with former four-term NPAD lawmaker Chun Jung-bae reportedly mulling his membership to the new party.
The members of the envisioned party plan to have a nationwide tour from Monday to promote the new party.
They also plan to field candidates in the April election, with some NPAD members voicing concerns that the move may pit the main opposition party against the new one. (Yonhap)
