Governing party slams government's economic performance

By Choi Sung-jin

“The Park Geun-hye administration’s economic performance in the past three-and-a-half years can hardly be called a success,” Rep. Yoo Seong-min said Wednesday. “What it will do in the remaining year-and-a-half is very important.”

“How can the government increase tax revenue by 9 trillion won ($7.84 billion) while the economic growth rate declines?” Rep. Lee Hye-hoon said. “It should stop squeezing people.”

“Don’t formulate extra budgets under the pretext of ‘Brexit,’” Rep. Lee Chong-koo said. “The government should spend money not for shipbuilders affiliated with the nation’s largest conglomerates but for the public’s livelihood.”

Foreigners, or even Koreans not much interested in politics, might think the three are opposition lawmakers. In fact, they all are affiliated with the ruling Saenuri Party, reflecting the widespread complaints about the Park administration’s economic policies among politicians, both liberals and conservatives, political watchers here say.

The three of course come from the “anti-Park” faction within the governing party. Given few ruling party legislators, anti- or pro-Park, had openly voiced criticism about the government’s economic performances in the past, however, the recent changes indicate either Park’s economic report cards are really dismal or she has already become a lame duck, or both, analysts say.

Rep. Yoo -- who was kicked out of the Saenuri Party at the behest of President Park for trying to “do his own politics” but rejoined it later despite the pro-Park section’s resistance -- said: “In restructuring the troubled shipping and shipbuilding industries, the government is giving the impression that it is merely trying to extend the lives of chaebol-affiliated companies until its tenure ends. It instead should agree to hold all people related with the fiasco accountable at public hearings or parliamentary probes.”

During the remainder of its term, Yoo said, the Park administration should not try to keep as many of the President’s election promises as possible but clean up the mess it has made, for the sake of its successor.

Other ruling party lawmakers at the Assembly’s strategy and finance committee also called for the government to use the extra budget for stimulating the economy and creating more jobs, stressing that “not a penny of it should go to the shipbuilders affiliated with the family-controlled conglomerates,” blasting Park’s pro-chaebol economic policy.

Opposition lawmakers were harsher in their criticism as a matter of course.

“The Park administration has formulated three extra budgets in as many years, which indicates its poor ability to forecast revenue and expenditures, also seen in its frequent readjustments of growth rate projections,” said Rep. Park Young-sun of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea. “This government has neither grasped global economic trends correctly nor put forth timely economic measures to cope with them.”

Noting that the government allocated only 1.2 trillion won, 10 percent of the 12 trillion-won extra budget, to spending for public livelihoods, Rep. Park called for using a greater amount for people, especially creating more – and more decent – jobs.

Other opposition lawmakers also criticized the government for still trying to stimulate the economy by overheating the already speculative real estate market and giving more subsidies to large exporters instead of working out measures to increase working families’ disposable income.