The frontrunner in South Korea's presidential race, Lee Myung-bak, said yesterday he has nothing to fear from a fraud probe and urged voters on the eve of election day to let him revitalize the nation.
With one rival branding him a "peerless liar," Lee used the final day of a campaign dominated by the complex six-year-old stock manipulation scandal to promise top-to-bottom change if elected.
"A new era will begin," he said. "Tomorrow the election will be over and if I am picked, everything will change drastically."
"Businesses will no longer be reluctant to invest. Consumers will open their purses. Markets will be vitalized. Foreign investors will rush here," he said.
Most analysts believe Lee, the pro-business candidate of the conservative opposition Grand National Party, will win today's poll amid disenchantment over a decade of liberal rule.
However, any victory for him would usher in weeks of political uncertainty as the independent investigation -- authorized on Monday by parliament -- goes ahead.
State prosecutors had on Dec. 5 cleared Lee of involvement in the case linked to the now-defunct BBK investment firm.
He had always said he had nothing to do with the firm, but his opponents on Sunday publicized a video clip of a speech Lee made in 2000, in which he says he founded BBK.
It led to parliament voting on Monday to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate claims Lee was involved in the 2001 fraud along with his business partner at the time.
Newspapers predicted the inquiry would report before a new president takes office on Feb. 25, raising the prospect of a president-elect being placed under investigation or even indicted.
Lee has said he made erroneous comments on the video because he was trying to promote new financial business at the time.
He reiterated denials of any wrongdoing, asserting yesterday that any inquiry "will not take that long. Tens or even hundreds of special investigations would never change the results because there is only one truth."
"The transfer of power will proceed as scheduled without any agitation," he promised.
Many voters regard Lee, a 65-year-old former construction executive and a former mayor of Seoul, as best suited to reinvigorate the economy after years of relatively modest growth.
Lee had been almost 30 points ahead of his closest rival in opinion polls released last week.
It was unclear how many voters would overlook his alleged ethical lapses in their eagerness for someone to ease high youth unemployment, stimulate growth and bring down high property prices.
"Dear fellow citizens, please make me president with support of more than a majority," he told a press conference. "Dear fellow citizens, please back me up. Let me revive the economy."
After he spoke yesterday, hundreds of supporters packed a street in Seoul's Sinchon District to welcome the man whose slogan is "Economy first!"
"Lee Myung-bak!" they chanted, flashing victory signs.
But Chung Dong-young, of the liberal pro-government United New Democratic Party, who came a distant second in the last permitted opinion polls, kept up the attack.
"I am worried that this country may fall into disgrace by electing a peerless liar as its leader," he told reporters, saying support for Lee had nose-dived since the video emerged.
The inquiry will probe whether Lee was involved in stock manipulation, embezzlement and money-laundering through BBK or other firms, as well as allegations that he covered up property speculation.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS