Dereliction of duty on the part of members of the National Assembly is becoming excessive. There are only three days left on the current extraordinary session and there are 2,243 bills to pass, but all of them are stuck in their respective committees. Among them are important legislative proposals such as the reclamation of “reconstruction” profits that exceed certain levels, the establishment of professional law schools, collecting income from speculative capital “at the source,” a system through which voters can demand recall elections on their local elected officials, stronger penalties for child sex abuse, and other bills that can be postponed no longer. The main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) refuses to either review or vote on these bills, however, and the ruling Uri Party sits around trying to scheme on the situation.
The situation originates in the attempt by the GNP to take the “open trustee program,” the key element to the recently revised Private School Law, and render it irrelevant, and in Uri’s incompetence. When Uri refused to allow that law to be revised yet again, the GNP engaged in a work stoppage that has halted Assembly activities. The GNP might also be wanting to table or stop bills it never liked anyway, such as those relating to the reclamation of excess redevelopment profits and law schools. Uri is without a plan.
Political parties that treat voters like pawns on a chessboard or rocks to be sacrificed in a game of paduk are nothing new. Democracy takes place through elections. Parties compete with other parties over the best visions for policy in order to get more votes, more seats, and more election winners. It heats up even more when there are nationwide elections ahead, but our political parties have abandoned the work they were engaged in.
Naturally, much of the problem comes from the fact that voters have low standards when they choose who they vote for. Even after parties disrupt parliamentary activities, even after they take their bribes “by the truckload” and then the same corruption continues in their primaries, even after the political faction that runs affairs of state displays its incompetence, and even after a progressive party joins hands with a party that represents the old establishment, voters still stubbornly make the same old choices. What party will ever have a healthy fear of voters when that is what happens?
The Private School Law should be meddled with only after it has been implemented. The GNP is not a party in service to the people when it paralyzies the National Assembly because it wants a bill that isn’t even being enforced yet to be changed, and the same goes for Uri, since it is doing nothing about the situation.
The Hankyoreh, 29 April 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Why Parties Don’t Fear Voters |
