The whole world is struggling to get out of a protracted recession and improve economic systems for the 21st century. A notable exception is Korea where the entire political and media communities are mired in ideological disputes of the 20th century.
Providing fodder for this anachronistic, unproductive war of attrition are the nation’s political progressives by electing lawmaker candidates through vote rigging and failing to settle its aftermath quickly. The leftist Unified Progressive Party (UPP) kicked out the two pro-North Korean lawmakers Thursday. It was a belated but correct action.
Now the ruling Saenuri Party and its conservative allies are pushing to expel the two from the National Assembly, not for their fraudulent selection process but for their thoughts. This is a wrong, dangerous move.
We urge the two UPP lawmakers, Reps. Lee Seog-gi and Kim Jae-yeon, to quit their parliamentary jobs as early as possible taking all moral and political responsibility for the controversy. They admitted in part the rigged voting but still resist the calls to resign, referring to them as a ``political offensive” and even ``murder by legislature.” The two former followers of North Korea’s self-reliance ideology must know the longer they stay, the weaker the positions of the entire progressive camp will become.
If they refuse to budge, the UPP and its election partner, the left-of-center main opposition, Democratic United Party (DUP), should not oppose the prosecution’s probe into the in-house election manipulation and resultant deprivation of their Assembly seats for violating the just and fair process, the first principle of democracy. The two parties should also make clear their departure from pro-North Korean elements.
This is the only way to minimize the damage to political progressives by taking one step back to take two steps forward later.
That said, the conservative camp needs to reflect on their ideological offensives that can make the McCarthyism of the 1950s in the United States pale by comparison. Especially disappointing is these political attacks are being led by the two leaders of the conservative camp _ President Lee Myung-bak and Rep. Park Geun-hye, the strongest contender for the next presidency.
Park recently made indirect but unequivocal demands that the two UPP lawmakers step down, saying, ``Whoever harbors questionable views on the state is unfit to work as a legislator.” Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, chairman of the Saenuri Party and pro-Park politician, echoed this, saying, ``We can’t help but screen some lawmakers whether they are qualified to guard the nation’s Constitutional spirits.” All Koreans know Park’s father was the most glaring destroyer of the Constitution by overthrowing a democratically-elected government through a military coup d’etat.
In his Memorial Day address Wednesday, President Lee vowed ``not to tolerate forces that deny the order of liberal democracy.” Voters are wondering how the President, under whose tenure the nation’s basic freedom and democratic principles went at least decades back, could speak such words.
Hidden under this revival of Cold War-like ideological brawls are Lee’s misrule, such as government employees’ surveillance of private citizens, the administration’s control of public broadcasters and irregularity-ridden river refurbishment projects. Most lamentable of all the lost discussion on economic recovery and the rehabilitation of devastated livelihood of the working poor.
Koreans cannot and should not have another ideology-oriented election and lag years behind global streams.