ed Picking right people

Park’s aides lauded for voluntary retreat

So far, so good. With only a few days having elapsed since Park Geun-hye was elected president, the public assessment of her post-election behavior and commitments to impartiality and national integration appears positive.

Among other things, her firm resolve to achieve national harmony through fair personnel management is quite impressive. Upon being elected, she pledged to ``appoint people from all generations, regions and genders to key government posts to end the history of division.’’

It’s no exaggeration to say that filling public posts with qualified people is everything. This is felt more keenly, considering that the incumbent Lee Myung-bak administration has earned poor marks for its overall failure in personnel management throughout its five-year tenure.

True, the successful formation of the Presidential Transition Committee, scheduled to begin this week, will be a litmus test for the new administration. If appointments are made impartially as Park promised earlier, it will signify the smooth launch of the administration. If not, it will be a repeat of blunders committed five years ago by then President-elect Lee Myung-bak who filled his transition team with his confidants and cronies.

In this regard, it’s quite encouraging that several of Park’s aides stepped down from their posts last week, saying they won’t take any positions in the forthcoming administration to pave the way for fair personnel appointments.

Their seemingly voluntary actions are laudable, considering that their retreat was made after they took power, unlike the past when the cronies of a leader pledged not to take any government posts ahead of the presidential election to placate voters’ antipathy toward their confidants.

Their retreat will help Park, the country’s first female president, to recruit talent broadly from outside, possibly from the opposition liberal camp. We expect more of her loyalists to follow the suit of Rep. Lee Hak-jae, the de facto chief secretary to President-elect Park, who announced Friday that he won’t take any position in the transition team or incoming government, saying he would return to his place in the National Assembly now that his campaign work is over.

Ahn Dae-hee, chief of the Saenuri Party’s political reform committee, Kim Moo-sung, a former ruling party lawmaker who led Park’s overall campaign, and Kim Sung-joo, chairwoman and CEO of the Sungjoo Group, have also left the governing party headquarters.

Given experiences of the past, there is no denying the possibility that some of the President-elect’s relatives or key figures in the Saenuri Party’s pro-Park faction may face legal action for bribery and other irregularities and this is what people don’t want to see during the last stage of her presidential term.

But this is not to say that all Park’s confidants should avoid public posts. What’s most important is that top posts should only go to the right people armed with professional knowledge and cumulative experience, even if they are cronies.

We sincerely hope that the incumbent administration will be the last one to be the object of public disdain for cronyism and corruption. We expect Park to receive applause for forming and operating the transition team and this will be the first step toward making her the nation’s first successful president.