Civic group says policies from president’s livelihood debates identical to ruling party pledges

A number of policy pledges that President Yoon Suk Yeol announced in the run-up to this month's general elections were identical to campaign pledges of the ruling party, a civic group claimed Monday, accusing Yoon of violating political neutrality. Activists from the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy made the claim as they appeared at a police station for questioning over a complaint they filed against Yoon on charges of interference with the elections in violation of political neutrality. The group claimed that Yoon held 21 debate sessions with residents about livelihood issues while travelling around the country and announced pork-barrel policies to woo voters without taking into account the necessary budget to execute them. "It cannot but be seen as an attempt to give advantages to ruling party candidates by churning out vote-catching policy pledges ahead of the elections," said Choi Yong-moon, head of the group's administration monitoring center. "The president's livelihood debate sessi ons represent a violation of the public official's duty to maintain political neutrality and an act affecting the results of the elections," he added. The civic group also said they plan to hand over additional documents as evidence that the policies proposed by the president were to a great extent similar to the pledges made by ruling party candidates. Police said they assigned the case to the public crime investigation unit. Source: Yonhap News Agency