The National Election Commission (NEC) has released figures on contributions to political parties and members of the National Assembly during 2005. There were 449,438 contributions, 2.4 times more than the 186,638 in 2004, but individual giving was only 36.9 percent of what it was in 2004, down to W98,410 from W266,621. What that shows you is that a culture of many small donations is finally settling in. That is a welcome development.
However, if you look at the large donations that exceed W1.2 million, you see that there is still a long way to go. You have to suspect something smelly is going on if you look at the "strange behavior" of businessmen like Doosan's Park Yong Sung and Samsung Petrochemical's Heo Tae Hak. They gave donations to various Assembly members while using different professional titles and addresses. The suspicion is that there are still dirty funds busy at work when that is how they handle legitimate political donations. Indeed, the business world is the farthest behind when it comes to transparency if you look at how many companies were found to have used executives names to make illegal contributions last year.
It makes you wonder if the giving was work-related when owners of construction companies give to members of the National Assembly's Construction and Transportation Committee and private school administrators give to members of the education committee. And it is highly probable that when the heads of local governments or members of provincial and city legislatures give large contributions to National Assembly members from their regions, they are paying up for having been chosen as candidates by their local party organizations.
The NEC needs to engage in a rigorous review to weed out the contributions that looked legal but were not or that used loopholes. It also needs to look into where the money is coming from, to see whether declarations are deliberately been understated or there are omissions. In the course of that it naturally needs to make sure the culture of healthy political donations does not suffer as a result and that good faith contributors are not penalized in any way.
The Hankyoreh, 11 March 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Rigorous Review Needed for Political Donations |
