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Lawyers representing President Park Geun-hye made some good points in the impeachment hearings at the Constitutional Court last week that anyone who cares about democracy should bear in mind.
But then they scored an own goal.
First, the good points.
Park's lawyers argued against all the charges that the National Assembly had listed to justify last month's decision to impeach, saying they were based on allegations that lacked clear evidence.
For example, they said, there was no evidence she ordered the National Pension Service to vote in favor of the merger of two Samsung Group subsidiaries as part of a deal to secure Samsung funding for two foundations set up by her friend, Choi Soon-sil, the lady at the center of the scandal.
Yes, she did ask chaebol to donate to the foundations, but such requests are normal practice and in the national interest as the foundations were part of a policy to promote Korean sports and culture.
Regardless of what people think about Park as a president, if there is no objective evidence to prove she is guilty on these and the other specific points directly related to the impeachment case, the court must rule against the Assembly and allow her to return to work.
She cannot be impeached because people "feel" she is guilty.
You would expect the National Assembly prosecution panel to have anticipated this line of reasoning and produced some evidence to back its case. But it didn't. Instead, the panel, led by ruling Saenuri Party Representative Kwon Seong-dong, simply repeated the allegations.
The President allowed Choi to interfere in state affairs by appointing top personnel, Kwon said; she failed to "protect the lives of the people," as required by the Constitution when the Sewol ferry sank in 2014, he added.
On the chaebol donations, Kwon made this unusual claim: "Park's alleged forcing fundraising from conglomerates shows she abused her power for personal benefit, which means she is unqualified to lead the state." I wasn't there and I don't know if he actually said this or whether the reporter got it mixed up. But if something is "alleged," it doesn't prove anything.
The absence of hard evidence makes the impeachment a construct built on sand. It might topple over.
In hindsight, the Assembly should have waited until the investigation by the special prosecutor and until Choi Soon-sil's court case had established the necessary evidence _ assuming it is there. But instead, lawmakers rushed.
It is as if they felt compelled by popular pressure and saw Park's near-zero approval rating and the huge weekend protests in central Seoul as the necessary evidence, forgetting that in the interest of democracy and fair play, a court is obliged to rule on proper evidence.
The President's lawyers sought to skewer that weakness with two observations.
One was that low ratings and negative public sentiment cannot be reasons for impeachment. That is true. Unpopularity and even incompetence are not impeachable. They are matters for the electorate at the ballot box.
The second point was that the protesters do not reflect all opinion and ― this, indirectly ― that therefore the court should ignore them. This is a fair point because the law and institutions should run the country, not public sentiment.
But then the defense team scored its own goal by playing the old 1970s game of linking the popular protests with North Korea. In this, its own evidence was mind-bogglingly stupid. Apparently the composer of a song protesters sing was once arrested ― note they didn't say if he was charged and found guilty ― for the crime of praising the North's founding leader, Kim Il-sung.
Not only was this silly and somewhat desperate, but it also reflected contempt for the well-meaning people who have exercised their democratic right to gather and express themselves.
In other words, by reminding everyone that they represent a constituency that believes democratic rights are risky and sometimes to be withheld ― by them ― for as long as North Korea is a threat, they unintentionally demonstrated that the moral high ground of democratic values, due process and evidence-based judicial judgments that they had sought to stand on is itself, from their own viewpoint, a hump of sand.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
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