Time to abandon ship

Government instead ought to build real ‘Happy City’

After the local election defeat, President Lee Myung-bak told the government and Grand National Party to ``carefully read voters’ thoughts.” Yet the President’s words apparently have fallen on deaf ears of some Cheong Wa Dae and GNP officials, given their handling of key pending issues. It seems as if Lee has been turned into a lame duck just halfway into his presidency and by his own men at that.

A case in point is the governing camp’s reluctance to give up its revised plan to build an education-science town 110 km south of Seoul, instead of an administrative city as Lee had promised while campaigning.

Faced with the election loss _ voters’ judgment in other words _ President Lee seems to have abandoned the ``revision bill” and returned to his election promise. Now the bill is at a parliamentary committee, which is certain to demolish it, judging by the composition of the panel’s members.

But the governing party, backed by some presidential aides, is trying to take the debate and consequent vote to the full National Assembly session, saying in effect, ``a historic issue such as this deserves nothing less.”

There are no legal problems with the GNP’s move, as the Assembly can move up any debate from a standing panel to a plenary meeting when 30 or more legislators request it. Nor is their argument necessarily wrong that the ayes and nays of the total 299 legislators should be ``recorded in history,” if it is helpful for responsible politics.

Far less agreeable is the ``real” intention behind these officials’ political engineering. The ``pro-Lee” faction within the GNP knows too well the bill will not survive even the full-house voting, but just wants to make a hole in the rival faction led by Rep. Park Geun-hye, which has been opposing to the revision bill far more fiercely than any other opposition party.

Any Korean interested in real politics must know the political squabble over the ``Happy City of Sejong” has been a power struggle between Lee, a single-term president who personally no longer needs the electoral support from the surrounding Chungcheong region, and the next-time hopeful Park who direly needs the swing provinces.

All this, however, is just a sad reminder of how politics in this country is only for the politicians, not for the nation and people as these polls pledge only in words.

In reversing the election promise, the governing camp cited administrative inefficiency to be caused by the splitting of the capital city. One feels like asking, however: Which will be harder to address, however, between the technical problem of efficiency and the far more fundamental issue of popular trust in politics?

This should not have been a Lee-Park duel but a showdown over more fundamental issues on the strangling congestion in Seoul and nurturing more balanced national development. So the best way to solve this inefficiency will be to return to the first plan of the previous government by relocating all key ministries _ not just a dozen unimportant ones _ and making it a fully self-reliant, ``happy city.”

Seoulites might as well worry about the drain of their wealth to Sejong citizens in the short run. In the longer run they may be able to live like New Yorkers, giving away all the stinking politicians and bureaucrats to Washingtonians.