Park Obama, Moon Boehner

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Wed, November 29, 2023 | 18:34

Editor’s Note

Park Obama, Moon Boehner

Posted : 2013-03-05 17:17

Updated : 2013-03-05 17:17

By Oh Young-jin
Managing editor

On both sides of the Pacific Ocean, democracy is failing to fulfill its principal role of pursuing dialogue as a means of settling disputes.

It may sound paranoid but it is hard to dismiss feelings that there is a big conspiracy responsible for this.

In Korea, President Park Geun-hye is helpless with an empty Cabinet.

The main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) refuses to act on her government restructuring bill. Unless this is passed, Park may not appoint, among other things, a minister for Future Planning and Science, the centerpiece ministry of her apparatus changes, and others intended to manage new portfolios.

Obviously exasperated, Park Monday took her case directly to the people with her first nationally-televised address.

In response, DUP leader, Rep. Moon Hee-sang, asked Park to "respect the right of the legislature," a polite way of telling her that she had no business regarding the passage of the bill.

But the spokesman for Moon's party was less concerned with etiquette when they described Park as "arrogant, "unilateral and uncommunicative."

What separates Park from the opposition is a section of the bill that seeks to change the entity with jurisdiction over cable TV channels from the Korea Communications Commission to the newly proposed future planning ministry.

The DUP claims that Park will use this to control the broadcasting industry so her reorganization bill, if passed as she wants, should be altered before being taken up for deliberation.

However, judging by the way the DUP behaves, one can't but think that it is has the ulterior purpose of taming the new President before her governance takes hold.

Of course, Park can't afford to look like an easy pushover at this early stage of her administration.

Monday marked Park's first week in office since her Feb. 25 inauguration.

Perhaps, now, there no longer exists such a thing as "honeymoon period" or, if politically correct for our unmarried woman president, "grace period" for a newly elected leader.

In the United States, it is a "sequester time."

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, repeatedly tried to resolve their differences over ways of avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.

They failed, forcing Obama to implement a process for a mandatory across-the-board federal budget cut.

In January 2009, Obama began his first term during the upheaval of the U.S. subprime crisis that later affected the whole world. This dismal circumstance in hindsight prevented his political foes from attacking him in his first 100 days in office.

If this is not convincing, the latest Obama-Boehner match proved that in Washington, D.C., a grace period for a new leader was a thing of the distant past.

However, there seems to be more than the lack of political honeymoon that could bring Park and Obama together.

The two are the first presidents to represent their respective minority groups. Park is the first woman to be elected as head of state in a society that has long been regarded as male-dominated.

Obama is the first black president in a country where people of his race were enslaved and were discriminated against in legislation and deed up to the 1960s.

In both cases, the logic might be that Park and Obama are suffering retribution from majorities, eager to wrest back hegemony.

If that is not their intention, they will have to show it by action by cooperating first with the minority heads of state before erecting a hurdle on their first major action in their new administrations.

Further inaction from the opposition in both nations may not just expose their narrow-mindedness for all to see but, on a broader scale, corrupt the spirit of democracy.

There are none willing to take the blame for this, are there?