By Kim Rahn
Progressive civic activists and opposition party members in Seoul have pledged to review the list of signatures collected to hold a residents’ referendum on the free school meal program to weed out false signatures.
A civic coalition for free school meals and opposition lawmakers said Wednesday that a group of monitoring agents will review the signature list to detect false names or other irregularities.
The move comes after the National Anti-Populism Union, a conservative civic group opposing the meal program for all students, collected some 800,000 signatures to hold the vote on the issue. After the city government reviews the list to confirm whether the signatures are of eligible voters, the list will be exhibited to the public for a week so that people can raise objections if they wish.
“Illegalities have prevailed in the signature collection process. Suspicions are that the union had unqualified people collect signatures, had people sign up by proxy, and sought help from the city government ― all illegal acts,” a member of the coalition said in a media briefing in central Seoul.
“We’ll form a group of people representing each district to review the list when the city government exhibits it. We’ll verify if there were any illegalities, to exclude signatures by proxy or false signatures,” he said.
He said they may file complaints against anything that didn’t follow the correct procedure.
The coalition also said it will cost 18.2 billion won ($16.9 million) to conduct the poll and urged Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon to spend the money on school meals instead, adding he is using the lunch issue to boost his political status.
“We’ll not let Oh scrap the free lunch program for his personal political purpose of running for president,” the coalition member said.
Currently, free lunch is provided to all first to fourth graders at elementary schools regardless of the parents’ financial status, except for four districts where it is offered to first to third graders. The Seoul Metropolitan Council passed a budget bill last December to finance the program for fifth and sixth graders as well, but Oh has refused to execute the budget, claiming the money should not be spent to feed children from high-income brackets but for other educational issues.
The referendum is likely to be held in late August.