우리나라 정당의 공직선거 후보자 추천제도의 문제점과 개선방안

Today, political parties collect and integrate diverse public opinions, actively reflect them in the process of forming national opinions, recommend candidates for public office elections, and conduct public office election campaigns under their leadership, thereby playing a very important role in the formation of state institutions. Accordingly, political parties have the nature of public goods as intermediaries between the people and the state. Therefore, the request for democratization of political parties by national laws such as the Constitution, Political Parties Act, and Election Act is justified, if not inevitable, both in reality and theory. Therefore, the process of selecting public office candidates from political parties must also be fair and democratic as an essential preliminary step to the election. However, the nomination process of political parties in our country has not been transparent or democratic as it has been under the full authority of the party leader, who is no less than the imperial president, and the judiciary has also been passive in controlling this nomination process. However, there are limitations in the legal system to pursuing democracy in the nomination process through legal interpretation, and it may not be desirable to realize legal justice through litigation procedures in a situation where there are no special legal controls on intra-party democracy. Therefore, it is urgent to establish specific laws and regulations for strengthening intra-party democracy and related litigation in case of violations by reorganizing the legislative system. Specifically, it is necessary to regulate this in the Political Parties Act or the Public Official Election Act, not the party constitution, so that the opinions of general party members in local constituencies or voters in the relevant constituencies are reflected in the nomination process and a fair and transparent procedure is guaranteed. It is also necessary to introduce a qualification certification system for candidates for public office elections. Furthermore, as the Constitutional Court of Hamburg, Germany, invalidated the state elections due to violations of democratic procedures in the party nomination process, the courts also need to intervene more actively in closed-door nominations. Law and politics should establish independent systems and respect each other’s domains, but more active judicial control is required against fundamental risks that could undermine the ideals of constitutional democracy. Through this, the undemocratic nature of party nominations that foster political distrust must also be improved.