Top election campaigners for Moon Jae-in, the presidential candidate of the main opposition Democratic United Party, decided to give up their posts Saturday, allowing their candidate to form a new election camp that will include other liberal forces.

The move came one day after independent presidential hopeful Ahn Cheol-soo withdrew from the presidential election, endorsing Moon as the sole candidate of the so-called liberal camp.

Moon's top election campaigners "agreed there is a need to form a new election camp through an alliance based on the spirit of mutual consent and cooperation between Moon and Ahn," Park Kwang-on, a spokesman for Moon, told reporters.

Other officials from the main opposition party noted the new election camp will likely include supporters of Ahn and some of Moon's top 10 campaigners, who offered to resign Saturday.

Moon and Ahn had earlier sought to field a single candidate after a two-way competition through opinion polls. Differences on how the opinion polls should be conducted had kept them at odds, though they had both agreed on the need to field a single candidate to face ruling party candidate Rep. Park Geun-hye in the Dec. 19 election.

"Locking horns over the method of merging candidacies is not righteous for the people anymore," Ahn told a nationally televised press briefing Friday.

Park, the presidential candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, strongly denounced the merging of candidacies between Moon and Ahn, claiming the opposition were trying to win the election with only tactics and that it showed how they are still stuck in the mud.

"I wonder if the people will not get confused by all this. I, on the other hand, intend to bring changes that the people want and work to establish the right kind of new politics," she told reporters Saturday.

(Yonhap News)

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문재인 후보 캡프 공동선대위원장단 전격 사퇴

민주당 대선 후보 문재인 캠프 공동선대위원장단은 금요일 저녁 단일화를 위해 사퇴를 선언한 안철수 후보와의 공동선대위 구성을 위해 선대위원장단 토요일 총사퇴를 결의하였다.

 
선대위원장단 총사퇴는 안철수 후보의 사퇴가 정권 교체로 이어지기 위해서는 우선 안후보 캠프와의 공동선대위 구성이 시급하다는데 위원장 전원이 공감대를 이뤘기 때문으로 보인다.

오늘 회의에서는 공동 선대위 구성 문제 외에도 안 후보 지지층을 야권에 결집시키기 위한 다양한 방안도 함께 논의된다.