[Editorial] No More Secret Deals About Legislation

The behavior of the politicians as they discuss follow-up legislation to the August 31 Real Estate is just pathetic. Each side is blaming the other for the delay and the subsequent return of unstable housing prices. The ruling Uri Party says the delay is because of the main opposition Grand National Party's (GNP) opposition, and the GNP says the channels of dialogue and yet Uri is avoiding all responsibility. It says Uri is dragging its feet.

It is shameless for everyone to have waited three months for the other guy to take the first move only to now fight over who is responsible. At the GNP, high-ranking party officials are hinting that they would accept a stronger "comprehensive real estate tax." Regular party members, however, continue to express favoritism towards citizens rich in real estate so it is hard to even figure out what the GNP's formal position is. Uri is in no position to boast of its accomplishments either, because it has talked much yet failed to act in a way that would prove any determination to see the right legislation passed. We call on both sides to stop bickering and pass the legislation so as to rid the real estate market of all its uncertainty.

In the meantime the closed-room secret negotiations that go on at the committee level at the National Assembly need to be taken issue with once and for all. The Finance and Economy Committee's subcommittee on taxation had been discussing legislation designed to back up the August 31 Real Estate Measures and only made its meetings public on Tuesday, at the demand of civic groups. You have to ask committee members what it is about their behavior that makes them so uncomfortable they have to hold secret meetings even about issues key to the people's welfare.

The same goes for other subcommittees. Generally, once the ruling and opposition parties agree on something in subcommittee the bill flies through the rest of the process to passage. Subcommittee agreements cannot adequately reflect the will of the people when they are arrived at in secret. Article 57 of the National Assembly Law states that in principle all meetings are to be open to the public, so how can the very Assembly that made that law break it and holds meetings behind closed doors as if a matter of principle? One hopes to see an end to that practice as a result of the problems cited in negotiating an agreement on real estate legislation.

The Hankyoreh, 30 November 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]