Ruling camp must reflect on duplicity on ferry disaster
The two major parties Tuesday wrapped up nearly six months of negotiations on a "special" bill to investigate the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry in April. However, a fair and objective evaluation of their final compromise shows that the bill is special in name only, falling far short of what President Park Geun-hye and her party promised months ago.
In a nationally televised speech on May 19, a teary-eyed President Park vowed to enact a special law to deal with the aftermath of the nation's worst peacetime disaster in decades, "until the victims' families feel absolutely satisfied."
So the families pushed for giving the proposed fact-finding committee powers to investigate and indict the officials responsible: Park recently rejected this demand, saying it would hurt the nation's judicial system.
The families backed off, hoping instead that they would be able to take part in selecting candidates for an independent counsel to be appointed by the chief executive. Park's proxies within the National Assembly turned down the request, too, claiming that it would infringe on the Assembly's legislative authority, thus systemically excluding the victims' relatives from the legislative and judicial process.
In a worst-case scenario, the Sewol case may end up as one of many national scandals, which started with a bang but ended with a whimper.
Behind this maneuvering is the ruling conservative party's determination never to allow the investigators to look into what President Park and her office were doing during the incident. This is why the governing camp frantically attempted to put the focus of whole episode on why the ferry sank ― the late owner of the ill-fated ferry and his family ― not on why the Park administration failed to deal with the sinking more effectively in its early phase, failing to rescue not a single victim trapped under the deck.
Cheong Wa Dae and the Saenuri Party, aided by conservative media, have lost no opportunities to evade the point ― the government's failure ― and divert public attention away from it. Nothing showed this better than the 24-hour-a-day coverage of some cable channels on the fate of the late Sewol owner as well as undue media attention given to a recent scuffle between some family members and an opposition lawmaker on the one side, and a designated driver on the other, in a thinly-veiled attempt to emphasize the "unethical" sides of the victims' families.
At stake is how to prevent the recurrence of a similar tragedy that left 294 people, most of them teenagers, dead and 10 missing, by getting to the bottom of the structural problems behind the ship's sinking and the failed rescue of its passengers. If past experience is any guide, however, "ordinary" independent counsels could not do this daunting task, which is why the victims' families want a ''special" law, which would authorize them to select a counsel who can do the job.
Human memories are bound to fade out with the passage of time. There is also an old saying, "Danger past, God forgotten." President Park and her party have almost succeeded in turning a manmade tragedy and structural problem into a traffic accident, in less than a half year.
Political power may be saved in this way. But the entire nation will be repenting of its incomplete handling of this enormously significant accident when another disaster occurs.
The two major parties Tuesday wrapped up nearly six months of negotiations on a "special" bill to investigate the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry in April. However, a fair and objective evaluation of their final compromise shows that the bill is special in name only, falling far short of what President Park Geun-hye and her party promised months ago.
In a nationally televised speech on May 19, a teary-eyed President Park vowed to enact a special law to deal with the aftermath of the nation's worst peacetime disaster in decades, "until the victims' families feel absolutely satisfied."
So the families pushed for giving the proposed fact-finding committee powers to investigate and indict the officials responsible: Park recently rejected this demand, saying it would hurt the nation's judicial system.
The families backed off, hoping instead that they would be able to take part in selecting candidates for an independent counsel to be appointed by the chief executive. Park's proxies within the National Assembly turned down the request, too, claiming that it would infringe on the Assembly's legislative authority, thus systemically excluding the victims' relatives from the legislative and judicial process.
In a worst-case scenario, the Sewol case may end up as one of many national scandals, which started with a bang but ended with a whimper.
Behind this maneuvering is the ruling conservative party's determination never to allow the investigators to look into what President Park and her office were doing during the incident. This is why the governing camp frantically attempted to put the focus of whole episode on why the ferry sank ― the late owner of the ill-fated ferry and his family ― not on why the Park administration failed to deal with the sinking more effectively in its early phase, failing to rescue not a single victim trapped under the deck.
Cheong Wa Dae and the Saenuri Party, aided by conservative media, have lost no opportunities to evade the point ― the government's failure ― and divert public attention away from it. Nothing showed this better than the 24-hour-a-day coverage of some cable channels on the fate of the late Sewol owner as well as undue media attention given to a recent scuffle between some family members and an opposition lawmaker on the one side, and a designated driver on the other, in a thinly-veiled attempt to emphasize the "unethical" sides of the victims' families.
At stake is how to prevent the recurrence of a similar tragedy that left 294 people, most of them teenagers, dead and 10 missing, by getting to the bottom of the structural problems behind the ship's sinking and the failed rescue of its passengers. If past experience is any guide, however, "ordinary" independent counsels could not do this daunting task, which is why the victims' families want a ''special" law, which would authorize them to select a counsel who can do the job.
Human memories are bound to fade out with the passage of time. There is also an old saying, "Danger past, God forgotten." President Park and her party have almost succeeded in turning a manmade tragedy and structural problem into a traffic accident, in less than a half year.
Political power may be saved in this way. But the entire nation will be repenting of its incomplete handling of this enormously significant accident when another disaster occurs.
