Ahn urges long voting hours

Kim Jeong-suk, left, wife of Democratic United Party presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, and Kim Mikyung, wife of independent contender Ahn Cheol-soo, pose at the “With Baby Walkathon” at the Olympic Park in Songpa-gu, Seoul, Sunday. / Yonhap

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Independent Ahn Cheol-soo teamed up with Rep. Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP), Sunday, to press the ruling party to join the campaign to extend voting hours.

Ahn urged the National Assembly to rewrite the election law to extend voting hours by two hours to encourage the self-employed and temporary workers to participate in the election.

The software millionaire-turned-presidential candidate said that people with their own business or workers on short-term contracts are hard pressed to find time to vote during their working hours.

“If major parties agree to revise the election law to extend voting hours from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. from the current 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the new rule can be applied in the upcoming presidential election,” he said.

The independent candidate said the current rule was set in 1971, and it’s time to change it as the landscape of the labor market has changed a lot since then.

“The number of self-employed workers has sharply increased and people now work longer. But there has been no change in voting hours,” Ahn said.

The National Election Commission said an estimated 10 billion won will be needed for the two-hour extension of voting hours.

But the Ahn camp said the figure was exaggerated, suggesting it will cost only 3 billion won.

Earlier, activists and labor unionists launched an online petition calling for extending voting hours to 9 p.m.

Right after this, Ahn unveiled his vision for the self-employed.

The founder of anti-virus software provider AhnLab pledged to establish a committee at local government level to ban rent hikes and ease financial burdens facing small business owners.

Moon joined the effort to ratchet up pressure on ruling Saenuri Party presidential candidate Rep. Park Geun-hye to agree to revise the election law to extend voting hours.

Speaking at an event in Sejong City, he criticized the ruling party for blanking the plan to extend voting hours in the National Assembly.

“Earlier, the National Assembly discussed ways to extend voting hours to allow people who can’t find their time to exercise their right to vote for their preferred candidate. But the effort went in vain due to the ruling Saenuri Party’s opposition to the move,” Moon said.

The DUP candidate also called for extending voting hours to 9 p.m.

Despite his siding with Ahn over the voting-hour extension, Moon made it clear that he was not on the same page with Ahn in terms of their vision for politics.

“It might be true that politics has underperformed over the past few decades. Despite this, I believe weakening political parties or the role of politics is not the answer to the mounting calls to overhaul the political arena,” he said.

Rather, the former presidential chief of staff to the late former President Roh Moo-hyun, argued that parties need to be empowered to reform the political arena.

During a news conference in the southwestern city of Gwangju, Moon said he would share power with the prime minister by allowing the No.2 to have greater discretion and power, if elected.

The power-sharing plan came in the midst of Moon courting the independent Ahn to select a unified opposition candidate to prevent a vote split.

He also unveiled a vision calling for equal development between the nation’s capital and the other cities.