SEOUL-- Minor presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo officially proposed merging candidacies with main opposition candidate Yoon Suk-yeol on Sunday to ensure an "overwhelming victory" against the governing party.
Ahn of the centrist People's Party also proposed selecting a unified candidate between the two through opinion polls, just like he unified candidacies with Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon of Yoon's People Power Party ahead of last year's local by-elections.
"Winning is important, but in order to overcome the current crisis and carry out future-oriented reform tasks, there should be an overwhelming victory amid people's trust. This can't be done by any single person alone," Ahn said during a press conference held via YouTube.
"I am looking forward to a sincere response to my proposal from candidate Yoon," he said.
Regardless of who becomes the unified candidate, the other should be his running mate, Ahn said.
Yoon said he thinks "positively" of Ahn's offer but said there is also a "disappointing point."
"I positively assess the proposal he made from the perspective of the great cause of a change of the government," Yoon told reporters at a hotel after meeting with former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. "I will think it over, but there is a disappointing point as well."
Yoon declined to elaborate on what the disappointing point was.
But his campaign earlier balked at Ahn's proposal to select a unified candidate through opinion polls.
"The proposed method ... runs the risk of going counter to the demands from people yearning for a change of the government," said Rep. Lee Yang-soo, chief spokesperson of Yoon's campaign.
The remark reflects the PPP argument that a unified candidate should not be elected through opinion polls because such a system could produce distorted results if supporters of the ruling party pick a candidate that they believe their candidate matches up better against.
Ahn and Yoon have been under growing pressure from conservatives to join forces to boost the opposition's election chances, with such political engineering seen as the surest guarantee of success in a remarkably tight race.
Polls have shown Yoon and Lee of the liberal Democratic Party (DP) neck and neck at around 40 percent support each, while Ahn has around 10 percent support.
According to a latest survey published Sunday, Yoon had 41.6 percent of support against Lee's 39.1 percent, while Ahn came in third with 7.7 percent support, followed by Sim Sang-jeung of the minor Justice Party with 2.8 percent.
The Realmeter survey of 3,040 people had a margin of error of plur or minus 1.8 percentage points.
Ahn had planned to hold an in-person conference earlier in the day but called off the plan and instead held an online conference after his wife tested positive for COVID-19.
Source: Yonhap News Agency