A popular joke says parliamentarians have the best job in Korea and one of the reasons for this allegation ― interestingly enough ― is that legislators have no obligation to report to work. This joke sounded more plausible last week, when the nation witnessed the pitiful state of their insincerity in a string of incidents.
The National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee convened a meeting early Friday morning to adopt a resolution denouncing Japanese politicians’ visit to Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine and nationalistic comments by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The resolution was due to be passed at the legislature’s plenary session in the afternoon, but the schedule was bungled as lawmakers present at the main chamber then numbered only 70, falling far short of the needed quorum of 151 in the 300-member parliament.
On Thursday, when the first interpellation session was held since the launch of the new administration, there was a bizarre scene in which Assembly Vice Speaker Park Byeong-seug checked lawmakers’ attendance after seeing the chamber vacant. At that time, the Assembly confirmed that only 59 lawmakers ― less than 20 percent of the current members ― had reported to work.
The Assembly Committee on Budget and Accounts convened an unusual meeting on Saturday, the weekend, as the ruling and opposition parties concurred on the need to hasten the deliberation process of the 17 trillion won supplementary budget bill. About 20 out of the 50-member committee were present at the morning meeting but in the afternoon, when there was a question-and-answer session, only six lawmakers kept their seats. Prime Minister Chung Hong-won and most Cabinet ministers had to attend the committee meeting from morning till night despite a heap of pressing issues.
Of course, lawmakers’ low attendance is nothing new. And there could be some unavoidable reasons for their absence, but attending a parliamentary session is a legislator’s basic duty. It’s incomprehensible that the Assembly couldn’t adopt a nationally important resolution because of the lack of a quorum.
Once again, we feel the urgent need to carry out broad-based political reform. Our political leaders pledged to turn the Assembly into a place where legislators work hard to serve the people when the 19th-term legislature opened last year, but their promises have so far proven false. Rather, they brazenly tried to repeat the outdated practice of inserting their pork-barrel projects in the proposed supplementary budget.
True, there is no quick fix to the piles of problems inherent in the political community, but what’s needed urgently is to oblige lawmakers to attend parliamentary sessions and regularly make public lawmakers’ attendance.