In his closing remarks during a TV debate with Rep. Moon Jae-in, the presidential nominee of the main opposition Democratic United Party, Wednesday night, independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo said he could not have reached where he stands now without the support of the public. He said he would try to bring in “common sense politics in which the people win.”

But the late night debate was certainly far from what the people, including Ahn’s ardent supporters, would have wanted to see. It was preceded by on-and-off negotiations between their aides on how to unify their candidacies to take on Rep. Park Geun-hye, the standard-bearer of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party, in the Dec. 19 presidential election.

As the merger talks went nowhere, they faced off without a formula for achieving the single candidacy during the debate, which was designed to offer a basis for judgment to those who would participate in the selection process ― most probably through opinion polls.

The two candidates tried to project themselves as a better candidate representing the liberal opposition camp and possibly a better head of state. But their arguments apparently sounded hollow to most TV audiences, who have been increasingly disillusioned with the prolonged process of unifying their candidacies.

A tug of war over what question the envisioned opinion polls should ask has made the merger process, which both Ahn and Moon earlier said would “touch people’s hearts,” increasingly nasty, with each side blaming the other.

As agreed on during their TV debate, the two candidates held last-ditch talks Thursday only to confirm that the difference between their stances still remains unbridgeable. It is in doubt whether they can meet the deadline for the merger process, which they initially set for Nov. 26 when the presidential candidacy registration ends.

The ongoing fuss, which has diverted the public’s attention from what it should be really focused on ― heated debates between final runners from the ruling and opposition blocs on long-term policies and future visions ― raises the need to consider changing the presidential electoral system. As this paper has noted, one of the effective alternatives might be to introduce a run-off vote. Under the system, which pits two leading contenders earning the most votes ― but not a majority ― against each other in a second-round ballot, Moon and Ahn might not have had to engage in a prolonged tug-of-war.