The corruption scandal buffeting the People’s Party is setting the first major test for the party’s self-avowed mantra -- new, clean politics. Given what we have been hearing, the chances are that the test result will be negative.

The scandal surrounds allegations -- raised by none other than the National Election Commission -- that party officials got back -- in the form of rebates -- 238 million won ($206,000) out of 3.2 billion won they paid to firms hired for the April 13 parliamentary election campaign.

Rep. Kim Su-min, who led the publicity unit of the party’s campaign team, is at the center of the allegations since the rebates allegedly came through a design firm she founded. NEC officials said the party and the firms fabricated relevant papers to hide the deals.

The election watchdog believes that Rep. Park Sun-sook, then the party’s secretary-general who oversaw financial affairs, and her deputy conspired with Kim. 

These pieces of circumstantial evidence were strong enough for the court to issue search warrants to prosecutors, who began investigating at the request of the NEC.

But initial reactions from the party, including its leader Ahn Cheol-soo, were little different from those that had come from the parties that Ahn so often accuses of being outdated and vulnerable to corruption.

Kim publicly denied the allegations, and Ahn only said that he “heard” that the allegations were untrue and that he would monitor the prosecution’s investigation.

Other senior officials like floor leader Park Jie-won and Vice Speaker Park Joo-sun -- himself a former prosecutor -- even warned the prosecution not to exploit and case politically and called for a “fair, objective” investigation.

This attitude met a public backlash, which forced Ahn to make apologies and the party to start its own international investigation. 

It is true that Ahn tried to build a political party different from the mainstream parties which are often shrouded by corruption scandals. He weeded out people with a history of corruption during the nomination process and wrote a party constitution banning corrupt members.

Without such efforts, voters would not have made the party the third-largest force in the National Assembly. It is obvious that Ahn and party officials should take the scandal seriously if they want to preserve such a positive public image and build a genuinely new, clean party.